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TO MY DEAR FRIEND FREMONT OLDER 

EDITOR "SAN FRANCISCO CALL" 

In giving this volume to the public I am indebted 
to yoUj without whose aid and encouragement the 
book would never have been written. To you again 
are due my thanks for furnishing the valued assistance 
of Elenore Meherin who greatly aided in the prep- 
aration of the manuscript. 

Devotedly yours, 

Al Jennings. 



THROUGH 
THE SHADOWS 

WITH 

O. HENRY 

BY 

AL JENNINGS 

Author of "Beating Back" 
ILLUSTRATED 




M^. 



NEW YORK 

THE H. K. FLY COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






coptriqht, 1921, by 
The H. K. Fly Compaky 



'Ji o -o n 



MADE IN THX U. S. A. 




A CARTOON OF MR. JENNINGS, DRAWN BY O. HENRY 
AFTER THEIR CELEBRATION OF NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1907 

As Mr. Jennings was signing, with reservations, the pledge which the artist 
had incorporated in the drawing, he remarked: "Well, Bill, it looks just like I 
felt last night, all right, but no one else would recognize me." 

"A thousand pardons, Colonel," O. Henry replied ; "just a moment, we'll fix 
that," and reaching for the sealing wax, he struck a match and filled in the 
familiar red hair. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I PAGE 

A mothers flight; birth in a snowdrift; the drunken 
father's blow; the runaway boy; the fight in the 
shambles; abandoned on the prairie 11 

CHAPTER II 

Failure as a bootblack; a friendly foreman; the only kid 
on the range; flogged at the wagon-tongue; slaying 
of the foreman; vengeance on the assassin ... 17 

CHAPTER III 

Chuck-buyer for the Lazy Z; last journey to Las Cruces; 
shooting up a saloon ; in the calaboose ; arrival of the 
father 22 

CHAPTER IV 

Release from jail; quiet years in Virginia; study of law; 
a new migration to the West ; brawl in court ; news of 
death in the night 26 

CHAPTER V 

Shot from behind ; agonies of remorse ; death scene in the 
saloon; a father's rebuke to his son; vengeance de- 
layed 31 

CHAPTER VI 

In the outlaws' country; acquittal of the assassins; a 
brother's rage; false accusation; the father's denun- 
ciation; refuge in the outlaws' camp 38 

CHAPTER VII 

Planning a holdup ; terrors of a novice ; the train-robbery ; 
a bloodless victory ; division of the spoils ; new threat 
of peril 45 

■y 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII PAGE 

Hunting the enemy ; the convention at El Reno ; drama in 
the town-hall; flight of the conspirators; pursuit to 
Guthrie; failure of the quest; "the range or the pen" 54 



CHAPTER IX 

Frank turns outlaw; the stickup of the Santa Fe; the 
threat of dynamite; crudity of bloodshed; the lure of 
easy money 59 



CHAPTER X 

In the Panhandle ; a starving hostess ; theft and chivalry ; 
$35,000 clear ; dawning of romance ; two plucky girls ; 
the escape in the tramp . 64 



CHAPTER XI 

The meeting with 0. Henry in Honduras ; the celebration 
of the Fourth; quelling a revolution; a new flight; 
the girl on the beach 71 



CHAPTER XII 

Voyaging at leisure; the grand ball in Mexico City; 
0. Henry's gallantry; the don's rage; 0. Henry saved 
from the Spaniard's knife 80 

CHAPTER XIII 

In California; the bank-robbery; 0. Henry's refusal; pur- 
chase of a ranch ; coming of the marshals ; flight and 
pursuit ; the trap ; capture at last 90 

CHAPTER XIV 

In the Ohio Penitentiary; horrors of prison life; in and 
out of Bankers' Row; a visit from 0. Henry, fellow- 
convict; promise of help 100 

CHAPTER XV 

Despair; attempt at escape; in the hell-hole; torture in 
the prison ; the diamond thief's revenge ; the flogging ; 
hard labor; a message of hope from 0. Henry . . 109 



CONTENTS 9 

CHAPTER XVI PAGE 

The hew "main finger," a tuba solo; failure at prayer; 
transfer to the post-office; literary ambition; 0. 
Henry writes a story 116 

CHAPTER XVII 

0. Henry, bohemian; the Recluse Club in the prison; the 
vanishing kitchen ; the tragedy of Big Joe ; effect on 
0. Henry; personality of a genius 126 

CHAPTER XVIII ^ 

Story of convict Dick Price; grief for his mother; her 
visit to the prison; the safe-opening; promise of 
pardon 135 

CHAPTER XIX 

Interest of 0. Henry ; Price the original of Jimmy Valen- 
tine ; the pardon denied ; death of the cracksman ; the 
mother at the prison gate 150 

CHAPTER XX 

The Prison Demon; the beast exhibited; magic of kind- 
ness; reclamation; tragedy of Ira Maralatt; meeting 
of father and daughter 159 

CHAPTER XXI 

Methods of 0. Henry; his promotion; the singing of 
Sally Castleton; 0. Henry's indifference; the ex- 
planation 183 

CHAPTER XXII 

Defiance of Foley the Goat; honesty hounded; 0. Henry's 

scorn ; disruption of the Recluse Club 206 

CHAPTER XXIII 

0. Henry's rage against corruption; zeal yields to pru- 
dence; a draft of the grafter's wine 224 

CHAPTER XXIV 

Tainted meat; 0. Henry's morbid curiosity; his interview 
with the Kid on the eve of execution ; the Kid's story ; 
the death scene; innocence of the Kid .... 232 



10 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXV page 

Last days of 0. Henry in prison; intimate details; his 

departure 250 

CHAPTER XXVI 

0. Henry's silence; a letter at last; the proposed story; 
Mark Hanna visits the prison; pardon; double- 
crossed; freedom 256 

CHAPTER XXVII 

Practice of law; invitation from 0. Henry; visit to Roose- 
velt; citizenship rights restored; with 0. Henry in 
New York; the writer as guide 269 

CHAPTER XXVIII 

Episodes of city nights; feeding the hungry; Mame and 

Sue; suicide of Sadie 280 

CHAPTER XXIX 

Quest for material; Pilsner and the Halberdier; sugges- 
tion of a story; dining with editors; tales of train- 
robberies; a mood of despair 290 

CHAPTER XXX 

Supper with a "star"; frank criticism; 0. Henry's prodi- 
gality; Sue's return 299 

CHAPTER XXXI 

After two years; a wedding invitation; another visit to 
New York; delayed hospitality; in 0. Henry's home; 
blackmail 308 

CHAPTER XXXII 
New Year's Eve; the last talk; "a missionary after all" . 316 



THROUGH THE SHADOWS 
WITH O. HENRY 

CHAPTER I. 

A mother's flight; birth in a snowdrift; the drunken father's blow; the 
runaway boy; the fight in the shambles; abandoned on the prairie. 

A wilderness of snow — wind tearing like a ruffian 
through the white silence — the bleak pines setting up 
a sudden roar — a woman and four children hurrying 
through the waste. 

And abruptly the woman stumbling exhausted 
against a little fence corner, and the four children 
screaming in terror at the strange new calamity that 
had overtaken them. 

The woman was my mother — the four children, the 
oldest eight, the youngest two, were my brothers. I 
was born in that fence corner in the snow in Tazwell 
County, Virginia, November 25, 1863. My brothers 
ran wildly through the Big Basin of Burke's Gardens, 
crying for help. My mother lay there in a fainting 
collapse from her five days' flight from the Tennessee 
plantation. 

The Union soldiers were swooping down on our 
plantation. My father, John Jennings, was a colonel 
in the Confederate army. He sent a courier warning 
my mother to leave everything, to take the children 



12 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

and to cross the border into Virginia. The old home 
would be fired by the rebel soldiers to prevent occu- 
pation by Union troops. 

A few of the old negroes left with her. They were 
but an hour on the road. They looked back. The 
plantation was in flames. At the sight the frightened 
darkies fled. M)^ mother and the four youngsters 
went on. Sixty miles they tramped, half running, 
half walking, and always beset with alarms. Frank 
was so little he had to be carried. Sometimes they 
were knee deep in slush, sometimes they were slipping 
in the mud. The raw wind cut to the bone. It was 
perhaps as terrible and as bitter a journey as a woman 
ever took. 

I was born in a snow heap and reared in a barn. 
They picked my mother up and carried her in a 
rickety old cart to the mountains. Jack and Zeb, the 
two oldest, had sent their panicky clamor through the 
waste. A woodsman answered. 

The loft of an old log-cabin church in the Blue Ridge 
Mountains was our home in those hungry years of the 
Civil War. We had nothing but poverty. There was 
never enough to eat. We heard no word from my 
father. Suddenly in 1865 he returned and we moved 
to Mariontown, 111. 

I remember our home there. I remember our 
habitual starvation. We lived in an empty tobacco 
barn. There was hardly a stick of furniture in the 
place. Frank and I used to run wild about the bare 
rooms. I know that I was always longing for, and 
dreaming of, good things to eat. 

Before the war my father was a physician. A little 



WITH O. HENRY 13 

sign on our barn tempted a few patients to try his skill 
and gradually he built up a meager practice. All at 
once, it seemed, his reputation grew and he became 
quite a figure in the town. He had never studied law, 
but he was elected district attorney. 

It was as though a fairy charm had been cast over 
us. And then my mother died. It broke the speU. 

There was something grim and fighting and stub- 
born about her. In all the misery of our pinched days 
I never heard her complain. She was perhaps too 
strong. When she died it was like the tearing up of 
a prop. The home went to pieces. 

Frank and I were the youngest. A pair of stray 
dogs we were, grubbing about in alleys, bunking en the 
top floor of an old storehouse, earning our living by 
gathering coal off the sandbars of the Ohio river. We 
sold it for 10 cents a bushel. Sometimes we made as 
much as 15 cents in two days. Then we would stuff 
ourselves with pies and doughnuts. Usually our 
dinner was an uncertain and movable feast. Nobody 
troubled about us. Nobody told us what to do or what 
to avoid. We were our own law. 

We were Httle savages fighting to survive. Noth- 
ing in our lives made us aware of any obligations to 
others. It was hardly an ideal environment wherein 
to raise law-respecting citizens. 

My father tried to keep some sort of a home for us, 
but he was often away for weeks at a time. One night 
Frank met me at the river. His eyes stuck out like a 
cat's in the dark. He grabbed me by the coat and 
made me run along with him. He stopped suddenly 
and pointed to a great, black lump huddled against 
the door of Shrieber's store. 



14 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"That's paw," he said. "He's asleep out there." 

Shame like a hot wave swept over me. I wanted to 
get him away. I was fond of him and I didn't want 
the people in the town to know. I ran up and caught 
him by the shoulder. "Paw, get up, get up," I 
whispered. 

He sat up, his face stupid with sleep. Then he saw 
me and struck out a furious blow that sent me reeHng 
to the curb. White hot with anger and hurt affection, 
I got up and ran like a little maniac to the river. 

I threw myself on the sandbar and beat the ground 
in a fury of resentment. I was crushed and enraged. 
I wanted to get away, to strike out alone. 

I knew the boats like a river rat. They were load- 
ing freight. I crawled in among the boxes of the old 
Fleetwood and I got to Cincinnati as forlorn and 
wretched as any runaway kid. 

But I was a little cranky. I made up my mind to 
be a musician. 1 could play the trombone. The 
Volks theatre, a cheap beer garden, took me on. I 
worked like a slave for four days. Saturday night I 
went around to the manager and asked for my pay. 
I was starved. I had only eaten what I could pick 
up. For four days I had haunted the saloon lunch 
counters. I used to sneak in, grab a sandwich, duck, 
grab another and get kicked out. 

"You mangy little ragamuffin," the manager swore, 
with more oaths than I had ever heard before. "Get 
out of here!" 

He knocked me against the wall. I had an old bull- 
dog pistol. I fired at him and ran. 

The shot went wild. I saw that, but I saw, too. 



WITH O. HENRY 15 

that I had to run. I didn't stop until I had climbed 
onto a blind baggage car bound for St. Louis. Then 
I crept into a hog car, pulled the hay over me and slept 
until I was dumped off at the stockyards in Kansas 

City. 

It was the first time I was on the dodge. It is an 
ugly thing for a boy of 11 to attempt murder, but self- 
protection was the only law I knew. Society might 
shelter other youngsters. I had had to fight for al- 
most every crust I had eaten. I was forced to take 
the law in my own hands or be beaten down by the 
gaunt poverty that warped my early hfe. 

It was fight that won me a brief home at the stock- 
yards. I had a scrap with the kid terror of the sham- 
bles. We fought to a finish. Grown men stood about 
and shouted with laughter. Blood streamed from my 
nose and mouth. The fight was a draw. 

The terror's father came over and shook my hand. 
I went home with them and stayed for a month. The 
kid and I would have died for each other in a week. 
We cleaned out every other youngster in the yard. 
The kid's mother, slovenly and intemperate as she 
was, had the sunny kindness of people that have hun- 
gered and suffered. She was like a mother to me. 

On an old schooner wagon we started across the 
plains together. Near the little town of La Junta, 
came the catastrophe that wrecked my existence. 

Al Brown got hold of some whiskey. We stopped 
for the night in the midst of the prairie. The beans 
were boiling in the open. He walked up to the fire, 
looked into the saucepan— "Beans, again," he snarled, 
and kicked the dinner to the ground. Without a word 



16 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

his wife took up the frying pan and beat him over 
the head. He went out — cold. 

The kid and I had to run out to the edge of the 
prairie. We always did when they started to scrap. 

She came out, hooked up the team and began dump- 
ing in her things and the kid's. 

"Johnny, get your duds; we're going to leave," she 
said. 

I never felt so isolated in my life. The kid didn't 
want to leave me. I started to cry. It was getting 
terribly dark. The woman came back. "Honey, I 
can't take you," she said. 

I was afraid of the dark, afraid of the silence. I 
caught hold of her. She pushed me away, climbed up 
on the wagon and drove off, leaving me alone on the 
prairie with the man she thought she had murdered. 



CHAPTER II. 

Failure as a bootblack; a friendly foreman; the only kid on the range; 

flogged at the wagon-tongue; slaying of the foreman; 

vengeance on the assassin. 

I sat there until the night, pulsing and heavy, 
seemed to fold in on me like a blanket. Then I 
rolled over on my face and groped along to the 
embers where Al Brown lay. I wanted company. I 
crouched down at his side and lay there. I was almost 
asleep when a queer thumping sent a shivering terror 
through me. I lay still and listened. It was Al 
Brown's heart beating against my ear. 

The bells and whistles of all New York thundering 
to the New Year sent me crazy with delight the first 
time I heard them — the prison gate clanging to on 
me made me insolent with joy — but never was there 
a sound so good to hear as the pumping of Al Brown's 
heart. 

I grabbed his hat and ran to the big buffalo wal- 
low. Again and again I dashed the hatful of water 
in his face. Finally he lolled over to one side and 
struggled to his knees. "Which way'd she go?" He 
asked quietly enough, but I was suspicious. I pointed 
in the opposite direction. Al rubbed the blood from 
the side of his face. "Let her go," he said amiably, 
and went stumbling off toward the creek. I followed 
him. He turned about. "Go 'long, sonny," he said. 

I waited till he took a few paces and then I sneaked 



18 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

after him. If Al Brown or his wife had stuck by me 
then I don't believe I'd be Al Jennings, the outlaw, 
today. It made him angry to have me trailing him. 
"See here, sonny, you go 'long — hustle for yourself 1" 

It was a mile across the curly mesquite flats to the 
town of La Junta. My heels were my only horses 
then, but the bullets of a sheriff's posse never set me 
sprinting the way that prairie darkness did. I reached 
the town just in time to catch special apartments 
where the hay was clean and soft on a west-going 
train. It trundled into Trinidad, Colo., at 3 a. m., 
and I hung around the depot until morning casting 
about for a business opening. 

My opportunity came with a Mexican kid of my 
own age. He carried a bootblack kit. I had a quarter. 
We swapped and I set out with my brushes ready to 
clean all the boots in the State. But the Mex swin- 
dled me. The people in Trinidad never blacked their 
shoes. I shouted "Shine, shine" until my throat ached 
and my stomach hooted with neglect. I felt like a 
menial. 

At last I collared a patron. A giant in a white 
hat with a string hanging down in front and another 
in back, a gray shirt, and sloppy, check trousers that 
seemed to stick by a miracle to his hips, slouched my 
way. 

It was Jim Stanton, foreman of the 101 Ranch. 
He had the longest nose, the hardest face and the 
warmest heart of any man I ever knew. Three years 
later, when I was 14, Stanton was murdered. I'd Hke 
to have died that day. 

My prospective patron wore boots with the long, 



WITH O. HENRY 19 

narrow heels, sloping toward the instep, that the cow- 
boys of that time wore. I wanted a closer squint at 
them. 

I stood in his way and asked insultingly, "Shine?" 

"Lo, Sandy, never had no paste on them yet; 
try it." 

He didn't like my methods. The black stuck in 
mealy spots. 

"Reckon you didn't daub it right, bub," he said. 

"Go to hell, damn you," I told him. 

"Pow'ful bad temper, sonny," he drawled. "How'd 
you like to be a cowboy?" 

It was kid heaven opened to me. That night I 
took my first long ride. Jim Stanton fitted me out 
from head to foot. I had never sat a horse, but we 
went 60 miles without a stop. There wasn't a kid 
on the range. They gave me a man's work and a 
man's responsibilities. They made me the wrangler, 
and when I took to running the fifty horses over the 
hills they used cowboy discipline to teach me that 
horses should be walked in. They strung me out 
across the wagon tongue and beat me into insensi- 
bility. 

After that beating I was an outcast. Nobody 
so much as noticed me. I longed for the Prairie Kid. 
I would have run away, but there was no place to go. 
The resentment that always riled me when the law 
went against me was burning my heart out. I hated 
them all. 

I was sitting down by the corrals one day when 
Stanton came along. "Lo, Sandy, here's a new bridle 
with tassels on it. Get your horse." It was the first 



20 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

thing any one had said to me in three days and I just 
busted out crying. 

I was Jim Stanton's man Friday after that. He 
came to trust me like the toughest man on the range. 
He treated me hke a pal. Stanton taught me cowboy 
law and, except for the running of the horses in my 
early days, I never violated it. I was square as any 
fellow and was reckoned a valuable hand, though I 
was ten years younger than most of them. 

Then came the tragedy that made me a "wild one." 
Some steers from the O-X ranch got mixed with ours. 
There was a dispute over the brands. Jim won his 
point, and the O-X peelers left without any particular 
ill-feeling. 

Jim went down to the branding pen to look over 
the steers. I was standing about two hundred feet 
away when I heard a shot fired, and an instant later 
caught sight of Pedro, one of the O-X men, galloping 
off at a mad speed. 

Villainy had been done. I knew it. I ran down 
to the pens. Jim was crouched over on his knees with 
a bullet hole in his back. 

It was as though everything went dead within me. 
It was the first real grief I had ever known. I sat 
there holding Jim's hand when I should have been out 
after Pedro. I sat there mopping his blood off with a 
bandana when I should have been yelling for help. 
Jim was the only friend I had ever had — he was all 
but God to me. 

To shoot a man from behind is crime in the cowboy 
code. The man who does it is a coward and a mur- 
derer. He is pursued and his punishment is death. 



WITH O. HENRY 21 

Pedro vanished from the face of the earth for a few 
months. We gave up the chase for him. One day 
Chicken, a kid of eighteen, came back from the hills. 
He had been watching our cattle to keep the steers 
from following a trail herd going north. 

"Get your horse," he said. "I know where Pedro is 
— Presidio county on the Rio Grande." 

We left that night with four horses and fifty dollars 
from Jim's successor. We rode six hundred miles 
and we got to Uncle Jimmy Ellison's on the Rio 
Grande just as the peelers were coming back from 
gathering horses for the spring work. They were 
running them into the corrals. I rode up and stood 
at the fence. Pedro came galloping up and into the 
corrals from the opposite side. He didn't see me. 
Like a flash I spurred in between the horses. They 
went wild and broke from the corral. Pedro turned, 
recognized me, and shouted to the men. I fired and 
caught him clean between the eyes. 



CHAPTER III. 

Chuck-buyer for the Lazy Z; last journey to Las Cruces; shooting up a 
saloon; in the calaboose; arrival of the father. 

In the code of the cowboy, it was right that Pedro 
should die. I felt that I had done a magnificent thing 
to kill him. Kidlike I had a notion that Jim Stanton 
had watched and approved. 

But we did not go back to 101. We hid in chapar- 
ral patches in the day, traveling nights until we 
reached the Lazy Z range near the Rio Verde. They 
made me chuck-buyer here. We had to go thirty-five 
miles across the desert to the town of Las Cruces for 
our provisions. It was about three months after the 
murder of Jim Stanton that I took my last ride 
through the gulches. In a mean and shameful pre- 
dicament my father found me. 

Old Spit-Nosed Ben, the superannuated relic of 
the Lazy Z, was with me on that last ride. He was 
a sort of errand boy on the ranch. We had loaded up 
the ancient double-decker freight wagon with about 
1,600 pounds of chuck. Ben was hitching up the 
ponies. We were just ready to leave. 

And then it occurred to me that I would get a drink. 
I was the youngest peeler on the Lazy Z. Chuck- 
buying was a man-size job, and I had a sense of great 
importance in it. A fellow in the grocery had gibed 



WITH O. HENRY 23 

at me. "Eh, little gringo diablo, little wart, where 
did they pick you off?" 

I wanted to prove myself. At the 101 the men had 
held me down. Jim had shoved me away from whis- 
key. I felt it was time to assert myself. 

The saloon was a dingy, one-roomed Spanish adobe 
with an atmosphere of stale frijoles and green flies. 
There were a few Mexicans gambling rather idly and 
a couple of cowpunchers playing pool. I sauntered 
up to the bar and took a drink, ordered another and 
then a third. It was the first time in my life I had ever 
had more than one at a throw. It fired me in an 
instant. Just to let them know I was there I shot 
three bottles off the back bar. The old looking-glass 
came down with a crash, and I went plumb wild and 
started to pump the place full of lead. The Mexicans 
got scared and made for the back door. One of the 
cowpunchers caught his bilHard cue across the door 
and the whole crowd were banked up there. I was 
reeling by this time and went to busting a few 45's 
at their feet. 

Two shots were fired, just grazing the skin of my 
neck. I turned. The room was hung with the gray 
smoke cloud, and the whiskey had me reeling, but 
through the haze I saw the bartender aiming straight 
for my head. Two more shots went wild. I fired 
pointblank at the fellow's face. He went down. 

It sobered me. I made for the door. A crowd of 
greasers clamored about me. My six-shooter was 
empty. As I got to the street some one smashed me 
across the head with a forty-five. I woke up in the 
calaboose. 



24 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

I didn't know why I was there. I remembered 
nothing but the terrible crashing in my head. Then 
they told me that I had killed a man and asked me if 
I had any friends. Chicken was the only fellow on the 
range of whom I would ask a favor. He was a blind 
adder fighter and came in to finish up the town for 
me. I felt sure that he would get me out somehow. 

The calaboose was a wooden pen about 8 x 10 feet. 
For six weeks I was kept there with Mexican Pete for 
my guard. Pete would sit in the sun outside the grat- 
ing and describe my execution. He went into all its 
details. Every morning he strung me up in a differ- 
ent way. But he was a good sort. After the first 
week we were friends. Pete had all the Mexican 
treachery to the stranger and all their doghke fidelity 
to a friend. 

They would have hanged me with as little compunc- 
tion as they would have drowned an excess kitten, 
but they felt no hatred for me as a murderer. Life 
was reckoned cheap in the cow country. 

One morning Pete stuck his head between the bars 
of the calaboose. His long yellow teeth gleamed. 
"Your padre, he come," he said. 

It was as if lightning went through me. I thought 
that Pete was poking more fun at me. He repeated, 
"Your padre, big fellow, he come." 

I would rather have been taken out to the tree and 
hanged. I did not want to see my father. I had that 
picture of him lying at Shrieber's store burned into 
my mind. But I had also the memory of a hundred 
gentle things he had done, balancing the roughness 
of that last impression. I did not want him to see me 



WITH O. HENRY 25 

in the pen with a Mexican standing guard over me. 
For the first time I felt sorry for the whole affair. 

It was Chicken who had sent for him. Once in a fit 
of depression I had confided in him. We were out 
on night herd together. The thick breath of the hot 
evening weighed about us. The cattle had been rest- 
less, cracking their horns together, crowding and 
scuffling. We had bedded them down at last on the 
level prairie and there was that tremendous silence of 
the night which rests like the hush of death over the 
plains. 

A storm was coming. We feared a stampede. 
Chicken and I sat on our horses, riding slowly around 
the cattle, singing to quiet them. We began to hear 
the rolling boom of thunder. Lightning struck 
through the darkness, darting its uncanny flash about 
the horns of the steers. 

I felt lonesome and homesick and full of premoni- 
tions. Often since the death of Jim Stanton I had 
thought of going back. I was tired of the isolation, of 
the ranges. I wondered about my father and my 
brothers. I wanted them to know if I died. This 
night I told Chicken to write to my father's people in 
Charleston, Va., if I should be killed. 

Pete stood there grinning at me. Never in my life 
have I felt so hot with shame and humiliation. I 
wanted to escape. I came out from my corner to beg 
Pete to free me. My father, straight, kind, smiling, 
stood looking at me, his hand stretched through the 
bars of the calaboose, 



CHAPTER IV. 

Release from jail; quiet years in Virginia; study of law; a new migration 
to the West; brawl in court; news of death in the night. 

There was such a queer, gentle look in my father's 
face, as though he were the culprit and not I. It 
jabbed me to the quick. He never said a word of 
censure to me — not then nor in all the years that 
followed. 

But he went quietly to work to win my release. 
Three days later I left Las Cruces with him. I was 
not even brought to trial. My father had taken a 
new start, studied law, won success, gathered the 
family about him and settled in Charleston, Virginia. 
The boys he sent to the Virginia Mihtary academy. 
Frank and I finished the study of law four years later, 
when I was just past 18. 

There must have been something unstable and reck- 
less in our natures, for our lives never ran along the 
level. We seemed to court adversity. Our fortunes 
went like a wave through a continual succession of 
swells and hollows. 

We struck the hollows when I finished college. 
The family packed its baggage and moved to Cold- 
water, Kansas. 

The Middle West was wild, new country then. We 
moved from Kansas, took up land in Colorado, built 



WITH O. HENRY 27 

the town of Boston, sold town lots, cleared $75,000 
and lost every cent of it in the county-seat fight. 

Crumb-clean we went into Oklahoma in 1889. The 
settlers were all bankrupt. The government even 
issued food to them. Frank and I were both athletes. 
We supported the family with the money we earned 
at foot racing. 

Just about this time one of the periodic swells in 
our fortunes swept my father into Woodward county, 
where he was appointed judge by Governor Renfro. 
John and Ed opened law offices in the same town. 
I was elected county attorney of El Reno. Frank 
was deputy clerk in Denver. 

It was the crest of our prosperity. Judge Jennings 
was the man of weight in the community. He was re- 
elected almost unanimously. John and Ed were the 
attorneys in every big case that came up in the courts. 
My father had built a beautiful home and had a com- 
fortable bank account. We were going forward with 
a swift, sure current when the Garst affair, like the 
uncharted rock, blocked our course. 

Many events in my life — the pistol shot in the Cin- 
cinnati theatre, the desertion in the prairies, the law- 
lessness of the ranges — seemed to have been shaping 
the channel for the rapids that were to hurl Frank 
and me into the maelstrom of robbery and murder. 
The Garst case precipitated the downfall. 

Jack Love had been appointed sheriff at the same 
time my father was named judge. He was a gambler 
and a disreputable character. While in office he had 
a little habit of arresting the citizens and charging 
them an exit fee in order to get out of jail. He de- 



28 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

veloped also a great penchant for land-grabbing, 
appropriating 50,000 acres of the government's 
property. 

Frank Garst rented this land for the pasturage of 
1,700 cattle. He agreed to pay Love $3,000. When 
the bill was presented it was greatly in excess of this 
sum. Garst refused to pay. Love brought suit. 
Temple Houston defended the interests of Love ; my 
brother Ed was attorney for Garst. 

Love came to Ed and offered him $1,000 in cash to 
dump Garst. Ed refused and won the case for his 
client. He won it on the ground that Love had no 
right to the land in the first place and was himself 
a trespasser. 

Love was out his $3,000. He was a bad loser. Ed's 
fate was really sealed when he won that case. Love 
waited his chance. 

It came a few weeks later. I went to Woodward 
to visit my father. Ed was defending a group of boys 
on a burglary charge. Temple Houston, Love's at- 
torney, was prosecuting. Ed asked me to assist him. 
The case was going against Houston. The atmos- 
phere was charged with bitterness. In the midst of 
my plea, Houston got to his feet, slammed his fist on 
the table and shouted, "Your honor, the gentleman is 
grossly ignorant of the law." 

"You're a damn' liar," I answered, without any par- 
ticular heat, but as one asserting an evident fact. 

It was like a blow in the face to Houston. He lost 
all control of himself. "Take that back, you damn' 

little !" He hurled the unpardonable 

epithet, and sprang at me. 



WITH O. HENRY 29 

His face was bursting with rage. His hand was on 
his forty-five and I had mine leveled at him. Light- 
ning anger was striking in all directions. Men rushed 
to the one side and the other. Somebody dashed the 
six-shooter from my hand. At the same moment I 
saw Houston surrounded and disarmed. 

The court proceedings ended for the day. But 
feeling ran high — the white-hot fury of the Southern 
cow people. Nothing but blood cools it. We knew 
that the settlement must be made. 

For once in my life I was not eager to square the 
account with killings. We went to Ed's office, my 
father and my two brothers. My father's harried face 
was like a reproach to our hot tempers. He was a 
broken man. He seemed to see the tragic failure of 
his life of robust endeavor. 

"What are you going to do?" he asked, almost in 
an appeal. 

"Nothing, until tomorrow," I told him, for I had 
made my plans. I intended to meet Houston, apol- 
ogize for my insults, demand the same from him and 
let it go at that. If Houston refused it would be 
time enough to meet the issue. 

My decision was not to be. The town was divided 
into two factions. Ours outnumbered Houston's 
two to one. They made up in their rankling ani- 
mosity what they lacked in numbers. It was as if 
two tigers stood ready to spring and each but waited 
to get the other in a corner. 

Ed and John agreed to stay in town to watch the 
office. I went home with my father. 

Never had the magnetism of his kind, turbulent 



30 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

nature seemed so forcible as in the weakness of his 
fear for us. He was in a reminiscent mood. For the 
first time he spoke of that day when he had struck me 
down at Shrieber's store. The tears crowded into his 
eyes. I knew that many a torturing moment had 
paid for that irresponsible blow. 

At 10 o'clock we went to bed. It was a hot sum- 
mer night. We left our doors open. I was just drop- 
ping into a slumber when I heard the stumble of 
frantic footsteps on the steps below. The door was 
pushed to and a broken voice called out : 

"Judge, get up, get up, judge, quick; they have 
killed both your boys l" 



CHAPTER V. 

Shot from behind; agonies of remorse; death scene in the saloon; a 
father's rebuke to his son; vengeance delayed. 

"Killed both your boys!" 

The broken cry seemed running up the stairs like 
a distraught presence; pounding along the walls; 
shaking through the doors. Its quiver beat through 
the clamorous silence. 

Thought stopped. My blood seemed to be running 
into molten steel that was wrapping me in quick, hot 
suffocation. I felt as though I were melting into a 
lump of motionless terror. 

My father's voice sprang through the hush — a 
howl, tortured and agonized, that trailed into a whist- 
ling moan. It shot through me hke a cold blade. 
Livid, gray, helpless, his hands dropped to his sides, 
his eyes like burnt holes in a white cloth, he slumped 
against the door. 

Half dressed, I ran past him, down the street 
toward the saloon. Something black and hunched fell 
against me. I put out my hand to strike it off. 

"Only me — got Ed — cleaned out — hurry." 

It was John. His face was a monstrous red stain. 
His coat was drenched with blood. His left arm — 
shattered from the shoulder. 

"Hurry!" he gasped. "Go. I'm O. K. Only got 



32 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

me in the shoulder. Ed's done up. Oh, for God's 
sake, go and be quick about it." 

Ed was dead. John was dying. My father broken- 
hearted. 

And all thanks to me! Never was anybody so 
whipped with remorse, so crushed. Pretty work my 
crude violence had done at last ! My unbridled temper 
was the real murderer. If I had not come on this 
visit! If I had only stayed on the range! If they 
had only hanged me in Las Cruces ! Like a pack of 
hounds the bitter thoughts kept baying at me as I 
went that quarter of a mile to the saloon. 

When I lunged through that door the crowd 
snapped apart like a taut string. Some scooted under 
the gambling table — others made for the door. The 
place was cleared. 

And there on the floor, lying in a huge blot of warm 
blood, his face downward, was my brother Ed. He 
had been shot through the head, just at the base of the 
brain. 

All that was good and human and soft in me rushed 
into my throat, cried itself out and died that hour that 
I sat there with Ed's head in my lap and his blood 
soaked into my hands and my clothes. Death was 
stealing into my soul with a blight more fatal than 
the wrecking of my brother's body. 

No one spoke — ^no one put out a hand to me, until 
presently the doctor leaned forward. "Al, let me 
do something; get up now." 

At the words the saloon was suddenly a-hum with 
voices. Men crowded about me. Sentences seemed to 
rush from them like pebbles down a cliff. 



WITH O. HENRY 33 

"He was right there — playing pitch," some one 
began. Another and another interrupted. 

"They struck from behind — " 

"They sneaked in — " 

"They soaked him when he was down — " 

"They pumped John — " 

"They beat it hke coyotes — " 

And then they put it all together and told it again 
and again from the beginning. 

The saloon was the two-room wooden shack with 
bar and gambling house combined, the common type 
in the Middle West a quarter of a century ago. Ed 
was playing pitch at one of the little side tables in the 
gambling-room. At one end of this room the town 
band was giving a concert. A score of crap shooters 
were busy on either side. 

Temple Houston and Jack Love came in by the 
back door, passed in front of the band and separated, 
Houston going toward Ed, \Love sneaking, unseen, 
behind his table. Both men were drunk. 

"Are you going to apologize?" Houston blubbered. 
Ed turned and faced him. His back was to Love. 

"When you're sober come back. Apologies will be 
settled then." 

"That's all I wanted to know," Houston answered, 
shuffling off. At the same instant Love jammed his 
forty-five against Ed's head and fired. As he 
dropped, Houston rushed up and pumped two bul- 
lets into my brother's skull. 

When the shooting broke the gamblers barricaded 
themselves behind the tables. Men in the bar-room 
scurried into the street. John was standing outside. 



84 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

He rushed in as Ed fell. Half way across the outer 
room Houston and Love caught him with a full vol- 
ley. Before anyone recovered from the sudden panic 
the murderers were gone. 

They brought Ed home. John lay dying. My 
father sat up and watched. I could not go near the 
house. I went out to the barn and waited. I felt like 
another Cain. 

There was no indecision in my mind. I knew 
that my lawless temper had precipitated the killing. 
But Love had been laying for Ed. He had ribbed 
Houston to the shooting. They had murdered de- 
liberately, cowardly — they had shot from behind. 

Before the night was over the news went like a 
flame through the country. Woodward held its 
breath and waited for the answering shot. 

Houston and Love would come back. They ex- 
pected me to get them. 

The remorse of the night before had reared Hke 
a coiled snake into a poisonous vengeance. There 
would be no quitting now. 

The mean, sordid gray of early morning had just 
streaked the night sky. My father came out to the 
barn. He looked tall and grim, but blanched as a 
leper. 

"Come in with me." His voice seemed pressed and 
flattened with misery. "Come in here." He led the 
way to the room where John lay in a moaning de- 
lirium. 

"There's one," he pointed. 

And then he moved silently into the other room 
where Ed had been placed on the board table. 



WITH O. HENRY 85 

My father's cavernous eyes glowed into mine in a 
blazing scrutiny. 

"There's two," he said. 

"Now what are you going to do? Are you going 
to finish us?" 

It was like a whiplash cutting a welt across my 
face. I felt like a beaten, cowering dog. 

Neither of us spoke. It was hard even to breathe. 
I could see that my father's hand trembled. I did 
not want to look into his accusing face. 

What did he mean? Did he expect me to do noth- 
ing, while all of Woodward waited for the blow? 

He knew the spirit of these prairie towns. Men 
settled their own accounts in swift and deadly fash- 
ion. Ex-fugitives and old range men made up the 
population. They paid little tribute to the law. 

The marshals who administered it were the meanest 
men in the country. They were mostly former horse- 
thieves, rustlers or renegade gamblers. 

The outlaws did their financeering with a six- 
shooter; the marshals used a whiskey bottle. 

I have known deputy U. S. marshals, dozens of 
times, deliberately sneak the bottle into the schooner 
wagons going across the plains; double back on the 
occupants, search the wagons, find the bottle, tie their 
victims to the trees, hold them until the scoundrelly 
trick gave them about 10 prisoners. Then they would 
drive them all into Fort Smith, produce their fraudu- 
lent evidence, collect mileage and cold-bloodedly have 
those innocent men sent up for four or five years on 
the charge of introducing liquor into the Indian Ter- 
ritory. Ohio penitentiary, when I landed there, was 



36 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

choked with men serving time on such trumped-up 
cases. 

The marshals grabbed off about $2,000 on the deal. 
The ctnvpunchers who sometimes became outlaws 
were clean men by comparison. They took little stock 
in the justice of sneak thieves. 

These things I knew. It was not murder to strike 
down the men who had shot from the back. In the 
Middle West, it was honor. 

It was not honor that I wanted, but vengeance. 
Ed and I had been 12 years together. He had taken 
the place of Stanton, of Chicken. He was more than 
either to me. Big natured, clear brained, the gentlest 
fellow that ever lived — and there he was with the back 
of his poor head blown off with the murderous bullets. 

"Listen to me I" My father's voice seemed rumb- 
ling through a wall of pain. It jerked me back. 
"Listen to me. There's been killing enough. There's 
been sorrow enough. 

"Your brother has paid the penalty of vengeance. 
John, too, may pay. Where will it end? When 
Woodward runs with blood?" 

He went on as though he were possessed. 

"You shall not do it. I am the judge here. I was 
appointed when the county was formed. I was 
named to maintain the law. If my own sons will not 
stand by me what can I expect from others?" 

All of a sudden he stopped. His colorless face 
seemed crumpled with misery. "Al, you won't do 
anything till Frank comes, will you?" 

Frank came on from Denver. My father had his 
way. 



WITH O. HENRY 37 

"Let them go to trial," Frank said. "He wants it. 
I'll do no killing." 

Frank was always like that, impulsive, soft-hearted, 
generous — undecided until he got into action, then 
he tore ahead deadly and relentless as a very hell on 
wheels. As for myself, I felt a blazing hatred against 
them all in my heart. I made one promise. I would 
wait until the trial was over. If the law failed, I 
would strike. 

But we could not stay in Woodward. Not even the 
old gentleman could stand that. He took John down 
to Tecumseh and almost immediately was named a 
judge there. Frank and I went to the sheriff, Tob 
Olden, and told him we would wait. He was disap- 
pointed. 

"May want to hit the bull's eye later, boys. When 
you reckon to bust them off, Tob Olden's house is 
yours." 



CHAPTER VI 

In the outlaws' country; acquittal of the assassins; a brother's rage; false 
accusation; the father's denunciation; refuge in the outlaw's camp. 

Nearly every range on the prairies sheltered and 
winked at outlaw gangs. From peeler to highway- 
man was a short step. 

Frank and I went down to the Spike S to hang up 
till after the trial. 

John Harliss owned the ranch. The Snake Creek 
and the Arkansas river ran through his 100,000 acres. 
It was an ideal haunt for fugitives. Harliss was hos- 
pitable. The Conchorda Mountains, Hke tremendous 
black towers, formed a massive wall on one side. The 
cliff came down to the creek. On the near side of 
the water the land rolled out in a magnificent sweep 
of low hills and valleys. 

Once across the Snake Creek to the mountain side, 
and capture was almost impossible. Dogwood, pecan 
trees, briar and cottonwood matted together and 
spread like a jungle growth up the mountain and 
there wasn't a marshal in the State would set a horse 
toward it. 

It was across the Snake Creek and up the Con- 
chorda that I made my last race against the law, 
years later. 

I went cow-punching there; Frank went over to 
Pryor's Creek, 20 miles distant. 



WITH O. HENRY 39 

The branding pen was just at the edge of the 
timber on the near side of the creek. HarHss was 
not over-particular as to the ownership of the calves 
branded. His pen was well concealed. 

One morning we were branding the cattle. Five 
men rode up, nodded to Harliss and began stripping 
off the meat from the carcass hanging in the trees. 
One of them came over to me. 

"Reckon you don't remember me? Reckon you 
uster work on the Lazy Z for my father?" 

He knew of the shooting in Las Cruces. He knew 
of my brother's murder. He knew I had a fast gun 
and a close mouth. He told me of a robbery that 
had been pulled off on the Sante Fe. 

"Ain't much in range work," he ended. "Reckon 
you'll join us yet." 

He was a shrewd prophet. Not more than a month 
later John Harliss was sitting on the porch of the 
ranch house. I was standing in the door. A nester 
rode up. We knew that something had happened. 

The nester comes only to bring news. If there's 
one fellow in the world that loves gossip it's these 
puffy little farmers that nestle in the flats. It makes 
them big with importance. 

John Harliss was a blond giant. He towered over 
the blustering nester. 

"Ain't heard the news, hev ye?" Then he caught 
sight of me and added furtively. "They cleared the 
fellows that killed Jennings' brother." 

Houston and Love free! 

The thing I had been dreading and expecting for 
six months came now with a shock that sent a cold 



40 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

fury of resolution through me. I knew that I would 
have to do deliberately what I should have done in 
passion. 

It was not blood-lust, but raging vindictiveness that 
spurred ire on the 75-mile ride to my father's house. 

The hoofbeats stopping at his door aroused him. 
When he saw me, he stood as one petrified. 

"Lo, your honor!" I put out my hand. He did not 
take it. 

"What have j^ou been doing?'" Never had I seen 
his eye so cold, so hostile. "What does this mean?" 
He reached into his pocket, took out a folded hand- 
bill and offered it for me to read. 

"Reward for the apprehension of Al Jennings," it 
said, "wanted for the robbery of the Santa Fe Ex- 
press." 

I saw it in a moment. That was the work of Hous- 
ton and 'Love. They would get me out of the way. 
They would save their cringing hides by another cow- 
ardly attack. 

"I had nothing to do with it. I'm damn' sorry I 

didn't " I hurled the words at my father. Anger 

caught me by the throat and was choking me. 
"Damned if I had anything to do with it. By hell, 
they'll pay for it." 

"If you had nothing to do with it, give up and 
clear yourself. That's the way to make them pay." 

One of those sudden shifts from command to appeal 
softened my father's face. "Do you want to bring 
disgrace on the name?" he asked. 

"The name be damned and the law and everything 
connected with it. I hate it." 



WITH O. HENRY 41 

"If you don't come in and clear yourself, I'm fin- 
ished with you." 

"I can't clear myself," I told him. "The HarHss 
range harbors outlaws. I can't bring them in to prove 
an alibi for me. Harliss wasn't there at the time. If 
I did give up, I couldn't establish my innocence." 

"Then you're guilty?" 

Not in all the lawlessness of my early life, nor in 
all the frenzy of sorrow and revenge after the mur- 
der, had such a full tide of storming violence beaten 
down the discretion of my nature. If he distrusted 
me what had I to expect from enemies? 

I went out from my father's house, lashed with a 
desperate, unappeasable fury. I wanted something 
to happen that once and for all would put me beyond 
the pale. 

I slept out on the range and the next morning rode 
toward Arbeka. I had eaten nothing the day before. 
On the public road through the timber on the old 
trail west from Fort Smith was a httle country store. 
I could have carried off nearly all its contents in my 
slicker. 

Five men were lounging on the bench near the horse 
rack when I threw my bridle over the pole. Their 
horses were tied. I couldn't tell whether they were 
marshals or horse-thieves from the look of them. 
Whatever difference there is favors the horse-thief. 

I bought some cheese and crackers. When I came 
out my horse was gone. 

"Where's my horse?" The fellow felt the hot blast 
of anger in the challenge. 

"Ran away," he answered. 



42 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Ran?" I snapped at him. "Some of you fellows 
turned him loose." 

In the glade about 200 yards distant, I saw my 
horse nibbling grass. I ran down, mounted and was 
just galloping off when a shot whizzed past, then a 
clash, a volley, and the next moment the horse lunged 
sideward and thumped to the ground, pinning my 
leg under him. 

They were possemen out to get me on the holdup. 
They were five to one and they didn't even try to take 
me on the porch. They fired without calhng for a 
surrender. It was better to get a suspected train- 
robber dead than alive. The question of guilt and the 
surety of reward were then settled beyond dispute. 

I pulled myself free, started firing like a madman, 
and saw two of them drop. I hid behind a tree, re- 
loaded and went for the porch, shooting as I went. 
Two of them ran into the timber. 

As I got to the store the fifth tumbled over into 
the brush. I ran inside, took up an ax and smashed 
the place to pieces. The owner crawled out from be- 
hind an empty cider barrel. I didn't care what I did. 
The viciousness of their attack infuriated me. I 
busted one at him as he crawled out the back door. 

The drawer in the counter was open. There was 
$27.50 in it. I took it. I needed no money, but the 
theft filled me with happiness. I had taken a definite 
step. I was a criminal now. My choice was made. 
I was one with the outlaws. For the first time since 
Ed's death, I felt at peace. I knew that I would have 
a gang with me now to the end. 

The big iron-gray horse that had stood undisturbed 



WITH O. HENRY 43 

during the ruckus, I mounted and started back to the 
Harhss ranch. My foot was slipping up and down 
in my boot. I looked down. 

The boot was filled with blood. One of the bullets 
had struck through the muscles above my ankle. I 
picked it out with my pen-knife and stuffed the hole 
with a puff-ball weed. 

When I got to the range I did not stop at the house 
but made for the cover in the timber. As I came near 
a pang of fear shot through me. It was long past 
midnight, but they had a fire blazing. One of the men 
raised himself stealthily and glanced toward me. 

He nodded. 

The sudden elation at the store was dissipated. 
Should I go on? Could I rely on these men? I no 
longer felt at ease with them. Should I tell them 
what had happened? The silence of the fugitive is 
inbred. The reserve of the savage in his armor. In- 
nocent, I had trusted the outlaws; guilty, I doubted 
their loyalty. 

"Hello," Andy called. 

"I'm coming over," I answered, guiding my horse 
into the deep stream. 

"Want some coffee?" Jake asked. I was limping 
miserably. They asked no question. 

"Looks like you got snagged," Bill offered. 

"Got shot. They tried to kill me. Soaked my 
horse full of lead. They beat it. I robbed the damned 
store." 

"Reckon you're with us." 

Andy settled it. 

They had a cozy camp hidden there in the lap of 



44 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

the mountains. An old wagon sheet, stretched be- 
tween two poles, roofed the kitchen. Bill was making 
biscuits in the flour sack, shuffling up just enough 
dough and not wetting the rest. 

I was lying on the ground at the fire. A man on 
horseback in the level at the edge of the creek had 
reined in and sat staring at me. 

Andy nodded to him. He came over. It was Bob, 
the fourth man of the gang. 

"It's O. K.," he said. "She stops at the tank." 



CHAPTER VII 

Planning a holdup; terrors of a novice; the train-robbery; a bloodless 
victory; division of the spoils; new threat of peril. 

"She rolls in at 11:25. We'll get the old man to 
dump her. 

"And if it ain't there, we'll have to take up a col- 
lection from the passengers." 

They sat under the wagon sheet, stowing in the 
biscuits and coolly doping out the "medicine." 

I was getting soft in the backbone. I hadn't fig- 
ured to jump right into a train-robbery. Here were 
four men deliberately planning to stick up an express 
car as leisurely as a batch of Wall-street brokers 
hatching out a legitimate steal. Little quivering ar- 
rows of nervousness went pricking through me. I 
felt that I had cast in my lot with Andy and his gang 
too hastily. The darkness fretted me. I began cast- 
ing about for an alibi. 

"Broke?" I asked. "I have some money. I've got 
$327. It's yours." 

Andy flipped his fingers. Nobody else paid the 
slightest attention to the offer. Five men were better? 
than four. I was committed. The M. K. T. was due 
to be robbed at 11:25 on the following night as she 
chugged across the bridge on the Verdigras river 
north of the Muskogee. The crossing was about 40 
miles from the Spike S ranch. 



46 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Toward morning we turned in. I was the only 
one who didn't sleep. Andy told me afterward that 
green hands always feel the yellow streak the first 
time. When the light came sneaking through the 
clouds, I began to feel better. The oppression of the 
night is an uncanny thing to a man beset with fearful 
indecisions. 

There wasn't another word said about the holdup. 
We lolled about and let the horses take their ease until 
the late afternoon. I was anxious to be on the road 
— to have the suspense over — to start the scrap and 
be done with it. 

We mounted about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and 
made ahead at an amiable trot, stopping now and 
then to rest. We wanted to keep the horses cool for 
the return. It was coal dark when we rode into a 
clump of timber, tied one of the horses to a cotton- 
wood tree and threw the other bridles over his saddle 
horn. It all helps in the getaway. 

As soon as we climbed down through the brush, 
the terror of the night before, a thousand times inten- 
sified, jabbed through me. The branches of every tree 
rustled with alarms. I expected any moment to see 
marshals step from behind the trunks or angry citi- 
zens swoop down on us. The nearest house was 
five miles distant and the only living soul around, the 
old pump man. But the dry sticks crackled like a 
festive bonfire. I wanted to caution them to pick 
their way. 

I felt as though the entire responsibility rested on 
my shoulders. It occurred to me the whole affair had 
been bungled. They had not planned it out enough. 



WITH O. HENRY 47 

"Suppose the old man won't stop the train?" the 
question popped out. Andy laughed in my ear. 

"Then they'll have to get a new man at the pump 
house," he confided. 

This put a crimp in me. I had shot men without 
any particular grudge, but to murder in cold blood 
as a matter of business — I'd have given anything on 
God's green earth to be off the job. 

"Who's got a match?" Jake chirped as merrily as 
though he sat in his own dining-room. 

"For God's sake, you're not going to strike a match 
here, are you?" Even the hoarse whisper seemed to 
boom through the silence. Jake struck the match, 
covering the light with his coat. He took out his 
watch. It was just 11:10. Fifteen minutes and the 
train would roll in. 

The massive iron bridge all but crashed to pieces 
as I put a light foot on its beams. The tall girders 
heaved together. In a panic, I lost my footing and 
half slipped through the trestle. And} scooped his 
hand down and grabbed me up as though I were a 
kitten. 

Our plan was to stop the train on the middle of the 
bridge to prevent the passengers from getting out. 
We would stall these cars on the trestle; the express 
would halt at the tank. We could rifle it and make a 
getaway before any alarm could be sent. 

Andy gave the orders. 

"Bob, go bring the old man down and drag a red 
light along. 

"Jake, you and Bill get on that side — Al and I will 
take the right. We need all the men tonight." 



48 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

As Bob sauntered off, I wondered if I would ever 
see him again. He came back, chugging the old man 
in the back with his six-shooter and ribbing him as 
he came. 

"Don't fall on this gun. Bub, or someone will do a 
slow walk tomorrow." The old fellow was chattering 
with fear. 

"Be easy, lad; be easy, be easy," he kept repeating 
like a magpie. "I ain't a-going to kick a ruckus; be 
easy." 

Suddenly there came a rumbling and a singing of 
the rails. Andy and I flopped to our sides. A light 
like a great eye flashed through the timber. The 
engine chugged viciously, heaved, whistled for the 
tank and stopped. 

Stopped of its own accord for water before it even 
got to the bridge I I got ringy from head to foot and 
was rolling in the grass when a shot banged out and a 
man swinging a light jumped off the train. It was 
the conductor. He dashed right past me. I never 
thought to stop him. Andy ran past and fired. I 
came, too, then and began running and yelling up 
and down the tracks. Bill and Jake were firing and 
hollering on the other side of the train like an army 
of maniacs. 

"Keep it up ; that's it — " Andy yelled to me. 

I did. Two or three passengers started to the steps. 
I fired in the air. They ducked. The fun was get- 
ting hot and furious. I was as happy as a drunkard. 

And then the engine began to heave and the train 
pulled out. I was afraid of nothing. I wanted to 
run after it and kick it good-bye. I felt like bellow- 



WITH O. HENRY 49 

ing. I wanted everyone to know I had stuck up a 
train and done it wonderfully. 

The hush seemed to swallow us up. Out of the 
darlmess I could feel Andy and Bob coming toward 
us. They didn't say a word. We started back qui- 
etly. I began to wonder what it was all about. 

"Didn't get a bean?" I ventured. Andy caught 
my arm. 

"Hell, yes, we went into the express," he said. "We 
got a little bundle." 

I didn't even know they had gone into the express. 
I didn't know they had taken a cent. I was so caught 
up in a frenzy of excitement and suspense, I hadn't 
an inkling of Andy's maneuvers. 

He had ordered the engineer out. Bob had cor- 
nered the express messenger. The two were as mild 
as lambs. They did more than they were told. The 
messenger opened up the safe and handed over the 
winnings. 

I asked no more. I wanted to feel like an oldtimer. 
But I went across that bridge as tho\igh my feet were 
winged. I didn't fall through the trestle this time. 
The girders didn't cram about me and I never noticed 
whether the water was black or yellow. I was filled 
with a thrill of great achievement. 

A few shots had been fired in the air, but not a 
man had been hurt, not a blow struck and here we 
were galloping back with a bundle of boodle in our 
slickers. The whole job had taken little more than 
half an hour. We struck into the timber of our en- 
campment well before daylight. 

The boys flopped down on the grass. Jake and I 



50 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

stirred up a fire and put on a pot of coffee. I was 
obsessed with curiosity. I wanted to know what we 
had got — ^if it had been worth our while. Jake 
talked and talked. He didn't say one word about the 
stickup. He chewed on about old times on the Red 
Fork, about his kid days, about every fool thing but 
the holdup. I was bitten with eagerness. 

Nobody else seemed worried about the profits. 
They gulped down coffee and stripped off meat as 
though eating were the one business of life. I began 
to fear that the reckoning would be postponed until 
the next day. Andy stretched himself, yawned and 
leisurely pointed to the horses. 

"Bill, go over to my saddle-bag," he said, at last. 
"We might as well split this now." 

I started up, knocking over the coffee pot. I had 
an idea it would take two men to carry the boodle. 
Andy grinned and rubbed his chin on his shoulder. 
'No kid opening a Christmas package ever felt a hap- 
pier shiver of excitement than I when that bundle 
was called for. 

We were lying around the fire. Its flicker in the 
gray darkness caught the faces of the men in a ruddy 
glow. There were two packages. Both were small. 
Andy took one, opened it and emptied a lot of cheap 
jewelry into his hat. 

Little blue and red stones flashed — gold necklaces 
glinted; ponderous watches ticked almost as loud as 
alarms. I lay there fascinated as though the jewels 
of an enchanted treasure chest were sparkling in the 
firelight. 

Andy lumped them into five piles, opened the other 



WITH O. HENRY 51 

package and counted out $6,000 in currency. I felt 
a chill of disappointment; $600,000 would have been 
closer to my expectations. 

To a copper, the pile was divided. Each man got 
$1,200 and a handful of trinkets. I jammed these 
spoils into my pocket with a rapture no attorney's 
fee had ever given me. I had earned as much in half 
an hour of gripping excitement as a year's labor as 
county attorney had given me! 

Years later, when I was in the Ohio Penitentiary 
and O. Henry had been released and was struggling 
for success in New York, I wrote him the details of 
this holdup and added a lot of incidents from other 
jobs. I wanted to write a short story about it. 

O. Henry was Bill Porter in those days. When he 
left the penitentiary he slammed the door on his past. 
He went to New York burning with the shame of his 
imprisonment and determined to hide his identity be- 
hind the name of O. Henry. Billy Raidler, a fellow 
convict, and I were about the only ones who knew 
him as an ex-con. The three of us were pals in the 
pen. Raidler was despondent — a typical jailbird 
pessimist. In every letter Porter wrote he urged me 
to stick by Billy, to remind him that two people in the 
world believed in him. 

In answer to my letter he sent me detailed instruc- 
tions. He told me just how to write the "Holdup." 
I did the best I could and sent the manuscript to him. 
He waved the O. Henry wand over it, turned it into 
a real story and sold it to Everybody's. It was one 
of his first successes. We went 50-50 on the profits. 

By the time that story was written I had learned 



52 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

that the drawbacks of the game outweigh a thousand 
to one the thrills. That first stickup was pulled off 
too successfully. It made me cocksure. 

I had been forced into outlawry by the unwar- 
ranted attack at the Arbeka store. I knew the 
Southwest well enough to see that I would be rail- 
roaded to the penitentiary on the word of the mar- 
shals, as scores had been before. I went into the 
game unwillingly and was immediately captivated by 
its intensity — its apparent security. Revenge gave 
place to recklessness. 

Not a rumor of the holdup reached the ranch. We 
lay around for days. Andy went off on his own hook. 
Bill slipped out a week later. Jake, Bob and I 
went up to the ranch house. A month had passed. 
We were not suspected. We decided to pull off an- 
other wad. 

I wanted to get the Santa Fe. That was the charge 
in the handbill my father had shown me. I was con- 
demned on that score already. I might as well have 
the boodle. 

We were planning it one night at the ranch house. 
Harliss had gone to town. It was very late. 
"What's that?" Jack started up. 
Through the quiet, like heavy drumbeats pounding 
along the road, came the sound of a single galloping 
horse. We knew it must be a peeler. Possemen 
never travel alone. 

At the porch he drew up. It was Frank. 
I had not seen him since the news of the trial came. 
The old, bonny gladness was gone from his face. 
"They've freed them! You heard it?" 



WITH O. HENRY 53 

Like a slap in the face, his haggard look struck 
me. He leaned forward, and lowered his voice. 

"Hush," he whispered. "I've got the goods. Get 
to your horse, quick. The lousy cutthroats have put 
up a deal. They'll stop at nothing. They've got a 
posse after you." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Hunting the enemy; the convention at El Reno; drama in the tovrn-hall ; 

flight of the conspirators; pursuit to Guthrie; failure of the 
quest; "the range or the pen." 

Relentless as the Corsican vendettas were these 
early feuds in the Oklahoma and Indian Territory. 
In the bad lands of the Southwest the roughest men 
in the country had their dugouts. They scattered 
all over the ranges. They killed. Other killers in 
the jury freed them. The dead man was finished — 
why bother the living about it? The living had taken 
their chance. That was the Oklahoma logic of justice 
in the early nineties. The law went with one party or 
the other. It was a case of grab the John Doe war- 
rants and go after your man. 

Houston and Love had doped it up with the mar- 
shals. They were out to get us before we had a 
chance to get them. 

"We're going to El Reno," Frank said. "They 
want blood. Let it be theirs. Change the brand. 
They've had enough of ours." 

I had not expected Frank to start things. He had 
an easy-going way that was full of disdainful contempt 
for the quick killers of the Houston and Love type. 

"Here's the odds," he explained at last. "They're 
going to hound us off the earth. The damn' cowards 
have been on the dodge from us ever since they fin- 



WITH O. HENRY 55 

ished Ed. They've got all the guns in Woodward 
cocked against us. 

"They've gone mad. They've plastered the coun- 
try with handbills. They've got you down for the 
stickup of the Santa Fe. They've got a posse run- 
ning up and down the country on the track of Al 
Jennings, the train-robber. They'll sock you off at 
sight!" 

He dashed the words out — sharp, vicious. The 
money in my pocket suddenly weighed heavy as 
though it were the $600,000 I had dreamed of. 

"They're a few days ahead of their guess — it was 
the M. K. T. I stuck." I wanted him to know. I 
didn't know how to tell it. I tried to make my voice 
indifferent and careless. 

"Pretty neat, wasn't it?" His tone was as casual 
as mine. "They never left a footprint after them. 
Must have been old hands at the game." 

"All but me," I answered. "Andy's gang are all 
vets." 

"Damn' humorous you're feeling ; damn' funny lay- 
out, ain't it?" He gave a whistle of impatience that 
acted like a spur to his horse. What my father had 
so readily accepted as true Frank would not even 
consider. 

Even when I told him the whole affair he could 
scarcely credit it. "You really had nothing to do with 
it," he said. "You just went along. It was force of 
circumstances. Just a spectator, that's all. You had 
no right to take the money." 

He did not know that less than a fortnight later he 
would himself jump into the lead of the biggest stick- 



56 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

up job that had been pulled in the territory for years. 
His one thought was to get to El Reno for the open- 
ing of the Democratic convention, to get Houston 
and Love before they had a chance to railroad us to 
the penitentiary or to kill us. 

"Once they get us, they'll finish it proper. They'll 
take a final swipe at the old man and John." 

We got to El Reno in the afternoon ; the train was 
to bring the delegates in at 10 o'clock that night. We 
kept under cover until it was time to go down to the 
station. There were small groups standing around. 
Everybody in the town knew me. I had been county 
attorney there for two years. 

As we came along a dozen greeted us as friends. 
They knew why we came. They had seen the hand- 
bills. No one made any attempt to gather in the 
reward. 

The train rolled in. Some one brushed past me. 

"They've slipped," he said. "Bill Tillman saw you. 
Tipped them off." 

The bourbons, old cowboys, ex-outlaws, nesters 
and a sprinkling of respectable citizens got off the 
train. Houston and Love were not among them. 
Two days later I met Tob Oden, sheriff of Wood- 
ward county. 

"They've sneaked in," he said. "They're at the 
session now. 

I didn't wait to get Frank. 

The town-hall was crowded. An old friend of 
mine, Leslie Ross, was acting as chairman. I stood 
in the doorway waiting my chance to saunter in un- 
observed. A fellow in the middle of the room inter- 



WITH O. HENRY 57 

rupted the speaker. Somebody else yelled for him 
to shut up ; a man behind tried to jam him back in his 
chair — there was just enough of a ruckus. 

I walked down the aisle, not missing a face. I was 
so intent I did not notice the breathless qiiiet that 
suddenly held the spectators. I glanced to the plat- 
form. Ross was standing with his hand upraised, 
his eyes riveted on me, his face ashen like a man on 
the verge of collapse. His look held the audience as 
a ghost might have. 

"Gentlemen, a moment, keep your seats." He 
started walking down the steps and toward the aisle. 
"Just a moment," he repeated, rushing up to me. "I 
see a dear friend of mine." 

"They're not here, Al," he whispered to me. "I 
swear to God, they haven't shown a face around. 
Don't start anything. Calm down." 

He was more excited than I. He seemed to think 
I was ready to shoot up the place. Houston and 
Love were not there. They had skipped to Guthrie. 
Frank and I followed them. 

We had come to the edge of the city. A man on 
horseback rode up to us. It was Ed Nicks, United 
States marshal. 

"Don't go in, boys," he said. "They're laying for 
you. They've got warrants. They'll get you on that 
frameup. The trap is all set. They know you're 
coming. Half the men in Guthrie are armed against 
you. They'll harvest you the moment you set foot 
inside the town." 

I had known Ed Nicks for 10 years. He was on 
the square. 



58 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

We didn't get Houston and Love. They got us. 
They got us to the tune of a hf e term in prison and 
10 years in addition. We'd be there yet if President 
McKinley had not commuted our sentence. They'd 
have brought us back on other charges if Theodore 
Roosevelt had not granted us a full pardon. 

Nicks rode with us a mile. 

"They've bought up the county, boys," he said. 
"You haven't a chance. Take your choice — the range 
or the pen." 



CHAPTER IX 

Frank turns outlaw; the stickup of the Santa Fe; the threat of dynamite; 
crudity of bloodshed ; the lure of easy money. 

Fate had more than half a hand in the chance that 
turned Frank into a train-robber. 

Ruffled and angry that our plan had failed, he 
turned on me when Nicks left. "I don't believe him," 
he said. "We should have gone on. We did not 
work it right. I'd like to see their posse. 

He did not have long to wait. We stopped off 
for a bite with Nigger Amos. Amos was a giant with 
a face as black as pitch and a soul as white as snow. 
He had married the prettiest little mulatto in the 
country. Their home was a jaunty yellow cottage 
that sat in the midst of the cornfields. Amos and 
Collie were smiles from the heart out. 

Whatever he had was ours. Collie was proud of 
her dishes and her cooking. Amos sat on the porch 
while she fried chicken and waited on us. We had 
come in just as the two were about to eat, and there 
was Amos, big, hard-working farmer, slinking into 
the background until after the white folk had their 
dinner. 

"Let's call him in," I said to Frank. He dropped 
his fork in surprise, looking at me as though I were 
demented. 

"Why not? Here's me, a highwayman — a train- 



60 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

robber; there's Amos, black skin, clean soul — ^why 
not? It's his grub anyway — 

"Amos, come in and have dinner with us," I shouted 
to him. Poor Amos was more startled than Frank. 

"What, sah? No, sah; no, sah; 'lowed I ain't for- 
got my manners." 

Amos' manners probably saved our lives. 

"Yo' boys done been up to mischief?" The whites 
of his eyes seemed ready to pop loose from the black 
when he looked into the room a second later. "What 
you done?" he panted. "Possemen a-comin'I" 

Without waiting for an answer he ran to our horses 
and raced them into the cornfields. 

"Yo' boys git down thar, too." 

Not a moment too soon, for seven men galloped 
over the brow of the hill and drew rein at the porch. 
The innocence of Amos would have made an angel 
blush. He had seen no one. No, sah, no gemmen 
stopped at his door. Not one of them would dare to 
ride down to the cornfield in search of quarry. They 
cursed and browbeat him. Amos stood firm. 

"What do you make of it?" Frank's impulsive, 
open face was blanched vrith anger. He was Hke a 
cornered beast, ready to strike at anything. 

"What do you make of it?" he demanded again. 
"Well, I'll tell you. They've made the Santa Fe be- 
lieve you robbed them. The Santa Fe is behind 
this." 

It was probably a wild supposition. It seemed 
credible to us. Houston was attorney for the rail- 
road. From the time we left the negro's cottage until 
we arrived at the Harliss ranch a few days later the 



WITH O. HENRY 61 

posse was on our trail. It didn't worry me much. 
There was a tang of adventure in it that appealed. 
To Frank it was hell's torment. He didn't like 
being hunted. He seemed to feel there was all the 
shame of cowardice in the attempt to escape. It 
lashed him into a seething rage that made him want 
to turn and strike back at his pursuers. 

They had been to the ranch house in our absence. 
They had left their mark in a few bullet holes in the 
walls. 

"What are you going to do?" Frank asked. I was 
neither angry nor unhappy. Just then, outlawry as 
a business suited me. 

"Finish up the deal Jake and I were planning 
when you came," I said. 

"I'm with you." 

And from that moment until the night of the hold- 
up he was like a man possessed. He had the resolu- 
tion of an army behind him. Almost single-handed 
he pulled off the stickup of the Santa Fe. He had 
worked one vacation on the railroad. He knew all 
about engines, he said, because he had ridden the 
goat around the yards. He insisted on bringing up 
the train. 

The Santa Fe stopped at Berwyn in the Chickasha. 
Frank and Bill were to get on the blind baggage as 
she drew out, climb over the coal tender and get the 
engineer and fireman. They were to bring the train 
about three-quarters of a mile into the timber where 
Jake, Little Dick and I were waiting. We would 
finish the transaction. 

There was nothing spectacular about the job ex- 



62 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

cept the haul. It came off just as we planned it. A 
six-shooter is a commander that few men dare to 
question. When Frank jabbed it in the neck of the 
engineer he was master of the train. I stood on the 
track and waved my hand. Frank gave the order. 
The engineer stopped. 

Little Dick and Jake ran up and down quieting 
the passengers with a big show of gun fire and much 
shattered glass. Few men are ever killed in a holdup. 
Veterans consider bloodshed bad form. Whenever 
I read of a conductor or messenger fatally shot I 
know that a new hand is in the game. It's easy to 
buffalo the crew. The passengers are a cinch to 
handle. They know the holdup has the drop on them. 
Nobody wants to take the chance of starting things. 
If they ever did break loose at the same moment 
there'd be a stampede that would turn the odds the 
other way. I never saw one. 

Frank took care of the engineer and the fireman. 
Bill and I went for the express. 

"Open up!" I yelled. 

No answer. 

"Bill, take some dynamite, and put it on the trucks 
and blow the damn' tightwad out." 

"No, no! Don't do it! For God's sake, gentlemen. 
I'll open." The messenger pushed the door to, bow- 
ing and shaking, and invited us in as though it were 
his private den and we were about to have a finger 
and a smoke. The courtesy of express messengers 
at such times is a bit pathetic. This one had either 
thrown the key of the safe away or he had never 
had it. 



WITH O. HENRY 63 

The boodle was in a regular Wells Fargo steel 
chest. The lid closed over the top. I took a stick 
of dynamite, put it in the crack just under the lock. 

The explosion sprung the sides and smashed the 
lock. There was $25,000 inside and not a note in- 
jured. We each drew $5,000 from that evening's 
pleasure. 

I told the story to a quiet, homebody sort of woman 
once. Her eyes lit up with amazement and the keen- 
est delight. That look gave me a large gob of joy. 
She wasn't so different from me, although she had 
never taken a cent in her life. 

"You looked as if you wouldn't mind running your 
hand into a chest like that," I said. 

"It's all in the point of view, at that," she answered. 

Another time, a skilled musician, a respected citi- 
zen, the father of three chilldren, took me aside. 

"On the level, did you get a rakeoff like that?" he 
wanted to know. "Well, what would it be worth to 
teach me the game?" I thought he was jesting until 
he had come three different times with the same 
proposition. 

I didn't teach him. It is a game that always ends 
in a loss. The money goes. Happiness goes. Life 
goes. 

Frank was the first to learn it. He turned the 
trick that sent us sneaking into Honduras in full 
dress suits and battered up hats. 

He fell in love. 



CHAPTER X 

In the Panhandle; a starving hostess; theft and chivalry; $35,000 clear; 
dawning of romance ; two plucky girls ; the escape in the tramp. 

We had been in the game nearly two years. Two 
hundred and some odd thousands had passed through 
our hands. It had passed quickly. 

Our partnership was capitalized at $10,000 one 
particular evening when we struck across the pan- 
handle of Texas after a hurried departure from New 
Mexico. 

We had gone there on the trail of Houston and 
Love. We had never given up the hope of evening 
up our score with them. But by that time our busi- 
ness connections had become generally^ known. It 
became increasingly difficult to gain an entree into 
any law-abiding city. Marshals in New Mexico 
fogged us a cargo of lead in the streets as a sort of 
salvo of welcome. We let it go as a farewell tribute 
and made a quick getaway. 

The panhandle of Texas was forgotten of God 
Himself in those days. It was the bleakest, poorest, 
loneliest tongue of mesquite grass in all the South- 
west. Deserted dugouts with their dingy chimneys 
sticking above the ground marked the spots where 
men had settled, struggled and failed. 

The lobo wolves hid in the abandoned adobe holes. 
At the sound of the horses they would leap to the 



WITH O. HENRY 65 

grass, their eyes, timid and frightened as a coyote's — 
one lope and they were gone. There was a breath of 
fear and desertion and unbearable quiet about those 
miles of prairie. It seemed isolated like an outlaw. 

Perhaps that ride had something to do with quick- 
ening Frank's susceptibilities. For when we saw a 
ripple of smoke coming from a chimney about half 
a mile distant it seemed like a flag of life waving us 
back from a graveyard. Both of us laughed and 
spurred our horses to the dugout. 

As we rode up a girl and a little fellow about five 
came out to meet us, as though they had expected our 
arrival. She was a tall, slender, bright-eyed bit of 
calico, with a kind of pathetic smile that went straight 
to Frank's heart. Her husband had gone to town a 
week before to buy the dinner, she said. He had for- 
gotten to return. 

Frank and I had not eaten for two days. Neither 
had the lady nor her little son. It was 12 miles to 
the nearest neighbor. I made the trip and brought 
back grub for the family. Frank and the girl were 
talking like old chums, the kid sitting on that train- 
robber's lap and running his small fingers over 
Frank's face in a trusting way that made my brother 
foohsh with pride and happiness. 

The lady cooked up the tastiest meal we had eaten 
in many months. She served with the grace of a 
duchess. Frank sat back and watched her, his eyes 
lighting with pleasure at every trifling word she said. 
This glimpse of home life was the first real adventure 
we had known in two years. 

"The banker down there skinned that poor little 



66 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

mite out of $5,000," Frank whispered to me. 
"Tricked her into signing some papers and then fore- 
closed on the mortgage. I'm going after the damn' 
thief and bring the boodle back to her." 

The bank was in the little desert town in West 
Texas, where the husband had gone for provisions. 
We arrived there just before closing time the next 
day. With the help of our six-shooters in lieu of a 
checkbook we induced the cashier to turn over the 
lady's $5,000 and about $35,000 additional. 

Idlers standing in the street, marshals and the 
sheriff made our exit difficult. They sent a hail of 
lead after us to coax the money back. 

It would have been a brilliant getaway but for the 
lady's husband. He had been in town when the rob- 
bery was pulled off. As soon as he came to the dug- 
out he sized us up and tipped off the posse. In the 
shooting that followed he was killed. We escaped, 
returned later and took the lady and her little fellow 
with us. 

It was a long trip across Oklahoma and the Indian 
Territory into Arkansas. When it was over Frank 
was finished as far as our former business was con- 
cerned. He was in love with the girl. He could 
think of nothing else. For the first time he sat down 
to figure out the reasons that had made him turn 
bandit. He could not find any. He was full of self- 
reproach. He kept wondering why he had ever gone 
into the game and figuring out how long it would take 
him to get back. 

"I'm going to quit." It did not surprise me. 

"They won't let you quit," I warned him. 



WITH O. HENRY 67 

*'Bunk," he answered; "nothing can stop me." 

He was full of plans. We would go to New Or- 
leans and then to the South Sea Islands. We had 
$35,000. It seemed enough to help us in jarring 
loose. I was ready for the adventure. 

We did not know that at that very moment we had 
been tracked from West Texas on the bank-robbery 
almost to Fort Smith. 

As soon as we stepped off the Mississippi packet to 
the levee in New Orleans a new hfe seemed to open 
for us. I felt free and cheerful as a good cow that 
has peacefully followed the herd and chewed in peace 
her daily cud. Our resolution to quit acted as a sort 
of absolution. We felt that we had cut loose from 
our past and that was the end of it. 

Every incident in those first days enhanced this 
false sense of security. A few hours after we arrived 
I was browsing about the French quarter. A man 
passed, turned abruptly, came back and grabbed my 
arm. I thought I was caught, I jerked my six 
shooter and jammed it into his stomach, full cocked. 

"God, Forney, don't you know me?" 

When I saw little Ed , my old pal at the Vir- 
ginia Military Academy, shaking my hand, I'd have 
given the soul out of my body to have kept that forty- 
five out of sight. It was like a screaming voice telHng 
him my brand, but it didn't seem to daunt him. 

Ed was a sort of hero-worshiper. He liked me at 
college because I had been a cowpuncher. For much 
the same reason, outlawry seemed to him unusual 
and daring. With all the hospitality of the South, he 
invited me to visit his people. 



68 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

They were wealthy. His father was a high official 
in Louisiana. While in his home we were almost 
certain of escape from detection. We went, Frank 
and I, and for weeks we lived in a fool's paradise. 
Life seemed an everlasting picture. We were home- 
hungry, and this visit was in the nature of a glorious 
new kind of spree — a sort of social intoxication. 

Ed had a sister, Margaret. She was small and 
whimsical and black-eyed. I began to understand 
Frank's symptoms. 

Summer in the South has many enchantments. I 
wanted to make this garden party perennial. Frank 
and I leased a steam yacht for a prolonged cruise in 
the gulf. Margaret, her mother, two cousins, Frank, 
Ed and I made up the party. There was a fine old 
family at Galveston, friends of Ed's family. We 
dropped anchor for a little visit with them. 

And straightway thej?- returned the compliment 
with a ball at the Beach Hotel. Of all my life that 
night was the happiest. Whatever Margaret saw in 
me I don't know. We were sitting in an alcove. 
Cape jasmines are fragrant in Galveston and the 
moon hung out like a big pearl. Music, soft and 
gentle, twined in with our thoughts. That kind of a 
night. 

I hadn't heard any one come. A finger tapped 
me on the shoulder. I looked up. 

"Step outside a moment," the man said. 

"Take a look at me! Now, do you remember who 
I am? Well, I haven't forgotten what you did for 
me in El Reno. I'm going to square the debt." 

The man had not taken his eyes from my face. I 



WITH O. HENRY ^ ^9 

knew him at once. I had saved him from the peniten- 
tiary when I was county attorney at El Reno. He 
was charged with the embezzlement of Wells Fargo 
funds. I was prosecutor. The man probably was 
guilty, but the evidence was entirely insufficient. The 
jury was prejudiced. I asked for a dismissal because 
it was the only square thing to do. 

That was one loaf of bread on the waters that 
came back as cake. 

"I'm with Wells Fargo," he whispered. "We 
have a bunch of dicks on the job. They know Al 
Jennings is in this hotel. The place is surrounded. 
I'm the only one who knows you by sight. Do the 
best you can." 

I had not said a word. My heart was pounding like 
a triphammer. If I ever felt like pitying myself it 
was at that moment. The ignominy of it — the dis- 
grace before these friends who honored us. I felt 
weak and limp all over. I went back to the alcove. 

"What did he want, Al?" Margaret asked, her lips 
white and drawn. Before I could protest, she hur- 
ried on. "I know you are Al Jennings. I knew it 
all along. I knew you from the picture Ed has. 
What are you going to do?" 

"Nothing. They won't get a chance." 

The blunt way seemed best. I told her that Will- 
iams (that was the name Frank had taken; I was 
Edwards) was my brother; that we were wanted for 
a bank-robbery in West Texas ; that our only chance 
was the Gulf of Mexico. She took it quiet and 
shrewd, without a whimper. 

Frank was dancing with Margaret's cousin. We 



70 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

waltzed over to them. I bumped against Frank. 

"Look out," I warned. It was an old signal. 

He followed us into the alcove. 

"We're surrounded." 

"Here? Oh, hell I" 

Gardens that blossomed to the water's edge ran 
in terraces about the hotel. We made our plan. To- 
gether, the four of us sauntered into a rose arbor, 
laughing and talking as though our hearts were as 
light as our tongues. The girls were as game as 
veterans. They challenged us to a race. One light- 
ning sprint and we were at the beach, the girls lag- 
ging far behind. 

Somebody's first-class dory helped our escape. It 
was lying there with the oars set. Muscles of iron 
sent that Httle yawl shooting across the water. The 
gods of chance, $32,000 and our six-shooters were 
with us. We didn't pause for breath until we 
chopped against an old tramp banana steamer. We 
clambered up the sides like aboriginal monkeys. 

The captain was a smuggler of Three Star Hen- 
nessey brandy. When he saw two dudes in full-dress 
suits, silk hats and white kid gloves tumbling over 
his railing, he thought we were drunker than himself. 
He wabbled up to us, his blowsy cheeks puffed out 
like balloons, his pig eyes squinting and his addled 
voice making a valiant attempt to order us off. 

"Put out tonight? No, sirs; Be damned and a 
whole lot more if he would. He didn't have his 
papers. He grew weepy over it. The government 
wouldn't permit it. 

When we slipped him $1,500, he changed his tune. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The meeting with O. Henry in Honduras; the celebration of the Fourth; 
quelling a revolution; a new flight; the girl on the beach. 

A few hours later, Frank and I and our good 
friend, the smuggler, were plowing ahead under full 
steam for South America. I don't know to this day- 
how long the trip lasted. Three Star Hennessey was 
rousing good company. We were so full of him, we 
didn't bother to find our bearings until one day the 
captain discovered his boat was out of water. At 
about the same time I began to thirst for a new drink. 
My throat was all but gutted with the smuggler's 
fiery brandy. 

When the captain ordered his men into the yawl 
to bring back water in kegs, I went with them. 
About 200 yards from shore the water got so shal- 
low we had to wade in. 

My full-dress suit had lost one of its tails by this 
time; the white shirt was embossed with little hunks 
of dirt and splashes of whiskey. Only the rim of my 
stovepipe hat was left, an uncombed red mat stuck 
out through the ventilator. 

With the water squashing about in my patent 
leather shoes, I was a queer looking pigwidgeon to 
strike up an acquaintance with the greatest men in 
Trojillo. 



72 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

I wanted a drink and I wanted it quick. My tongue 
was hot and my feet were cold. I didn't have time to 
waste trying to make the natives of Honduras under- 
stand my perplexity. I caught sight of the American 
flag. In that parched and unslaked moment it meant 
the joy of freedom — liberty of the throat and the 
tongue. 

Under the ripple of that flag I felt certain that I 
would find some kindred soul. I did. 

On the porch of the squat wooden bungalow that 
housed the American consulate, sat an ample, digni- 
fied figure in immaculate white ducks. He had a large, 
nobly-set head, with hair the color of new rope and a 
full, straight-glancing gray eye that noted without a 
sparkle of laughter every detail of my ludicrous 
makeup. 

He was already serene and comfortably situated 
with liquor, but he had about him an attitude of calm 
distinction. A rather pompous dignitary, he seemed 
to me, sitting there as though he owned the place. 
This, I thought, is indeed a man worthy to be the 
American consul. 

I felt hke a newsboy accosting a millionaire. 

"Say, mister," I asked, "could you lead me to a 
drink? Burnt out on Three Star Hennessey. Got a 
different brand?" 

"We have a lotion here that is guaranteed to up- 
lift the spirit," he answered in a hushed undertone 
that seemed to charge his words with vast importance. 

"Are you the American consul?" I ventured also 
in a whisper. 

"No, just anchored here," he smuggled back the 



WITH O. HENRY 73 

information. Then his cool glance rested on the 
ragged edge of my coat. 

"What caused you to leave in such a hurry?" he 
asked. 

"Perhaps the same reason that routed yourself," 
I retorted. 

The merest flicker of a smile touched his lips. He 
got up, took my arm and together we helped each 
other down the street, that was narrow as a burrow 
path, to the nearest cantina. 

This was my first jaunt with William Sydney 
Porter. Together, we struck out on a long road that 
lost itself, for many years, in a dark tunnel. When 
the path broadened out again, it was the world's high- 
way. The man at my side was no longer Bill Porter, 
the fugitive, the ex-convict. He was O. Henry, the 
greatest of America's short-story writers. 

But, to me, in every detour of the road, he remained 
the same calm, whimsical Bill — baffling, reserved, 
loveable — who had led me to the Mexican doggery 
for my first drink in the paradise of fugitives. 

In the dingy adobe estanca I found the solution 
guaranteed to uplift the spirit. But it was not in 
the sweet, heavy concoction the dignitary from the 
consulate called for. It was in the droll, unsmihng 
waggery of the conversation that came forth in 
measured, hesitant, excessively pure English as we 
leaned on the rickety wooden table and drank without 
counting our glasses. 

Despite the air of distinction that was with him as 
a sort of birthmark, I felt at once drawn to him. I 
began to unfold my plan of settling in the country. 



74 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"This is an admirable location for a man who 
doesn't want much to do," he said. 

"What line are you interested in?" I asked. 

"I haven't given the matter much thought," he 
said. "I entertain the newcomers." 

"You must be a hell of a busy man," I suggested. 

"You're the first since my arrival." 

He leaned over. "You probably wonder who I 
am and why I'm here?" 

In Honduras every American is a subject of sus- 
picion. 

"Oh, God, no," I put in quickly. "In my country 
nobody asks a man's name or his past. You're all 
right." 

"Thanks, colonel." He drew in his upper lip in a 
manner that was characteristic. "You might call me 
Bill. I think I would like that." 

Several hours we sat there, an ex-highwayman in 
a tattered dress suit and a fugitive in spotless white 
ducks, together planning a suitable investment for 
my stolen funds. Porter suggested a cocoanut 
plantation, a campaign for the presidency, an indigo 
concession. 

There was something so fascinating in the odd sur- 
prise lurking in his remarks, I found myself waiting 
for his conclusions. I forgot that the Helena had 
but stopped for water and might even now be well 
cleared of the shores of Honduras. 

The mate beckoned to me. I nearly knocked the 
table over in my haste. 

"Just a moment." Porter's unruffled undertone 
held me as though he had put a restraining hand on 



WITH O. HENRY 75 

my arm. "You are an American, Have you con- 
sidered the celebration of the glorious Fourth?" 

"Fourth, what?" 

"The Fourth of July, colonel, which falls at one 
minute past 12 tonight. Let us have some festivity 
on the occasion." 

Every one who knows O. Henry knows how three 
loyal prodigals celebrated the nation's birth. He has 
made it memorable in his story, "The Fourth in 
Salvador." What he couldn't remember he fabri- 
cated, but many of the details, with the exception of 
the ice plant and the $1,000 bonus from the govern- 
ment, happened just as he has narrated them. 

Somehow we got Frank off the boat. Long after 
midnight Porter took us to the consulate, where he 
made his home. He had a little cot in one corner of 
the main room. He took the blankets from it and 
spread them on the floor. The three of us stretched 
out. 

About 11 o'clock in the morning the celebration of 
the Fourth opened. Porter, Frank, two Irishmen 
who owned an indigo concession, the American con- 
sul, myself and a negro, brought along for the sake 
of democracy, made up the party. For a fitting ob- 
servance of America's triumph Porter insisted that 
the English consul join us. We put the matter be- 
fore his majesty's subject. He agreed that it would 
be a "devil of a fine joke." 

There were but four life-size houses in Trojillo. 
Under the shade of the governor's mansion we stood 
and sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Out of 
deference to our guest Porter suggested that we 



76 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

render one verse of "God Save the King." The 
Britisher objected. "Don't make damn' nonsense 
of this occasion," he demurred. 

We started out to shoot up the town in true Texas 
style, prepared to wind up the fireworks with a bar- 
becued goat in the lemon grove near the beach. We 
never got to the barbecue. A revolution intervened. 

We had shot up two estancas. Glass was shattered 
everywhere. The Carib barkeepers had fled. We 
were helping ourselves and scrupulously laying the 
money for every drink on the counter. 

Suddenly a shot was fired from the outside. Porter 
had just finished smashing up a mirror with a bottle. 
He turned with a quiet that was as ludicrous as it was 
inimitable. 

"Gentlemen," he said, "the natives are trying to 
steal our copyrighted Fom^th." 

We made a clattering dash for the street, shooting 
wildly into the air. A little man in a flaming red 
coat came galloping by. About 30 barefoot horse- 
men, all in red coats and very little else, tore up a 
mighty cloud of dust in his wake. They fired off 
their old-fashioned muzzle loaders as if they really 
meant murder. 

As the leader whirled past on his diminutive gray 
pony Porter caught him by the waist and dragged 
him off. I sprang into the saddle, shooting and yell- 
ing like a maniac. 

"Reinforcements, reinforcements!" Like a song 
of victory the shout thundered from the rear. I 
don't know where or how I rode. 

But the next day the governor and two of his Httle 



WITH O. HENRY 77 

tan Caribs called at the consulate. He wished to 
thank the American patriots for the magnificent aid 
they had given in quelling the revolution. They had 
saved the republic! With a lordly air he offered us 
the cocoanut plantations that grew wild all over the 
country. The incredible daring of the American 
riders had saved the nation ! 

We didn't even know there had been a revolution. 
And we didn't know whose side we had taken. Porter 
rose to the occasion. 

"We appreciate the government's attitude," he 
answered, with a touch of patronage in his tone. "So 
often patriots are forgotten." 

It seems that in that moment when we rushed 
wildly to the door of the cantina we changed the tide 
of battle. The government troops were chasing the 
rebels and the rebels were winning. We had ralHed 
the royal army and led it to victory. It was a blood- 
less battle. 

Our trimnph was short-lived. The government 
and the rebel leaders patched up their differences. 
The rebel general demanded amends for the insult 
to his troops. He demanded the lives of the outsiders 
who had impudently ended a revolution before it had 
decently begun. 

The American consul advised a hasty and instant 
departure. 

"Is there no protection in this realm for an Ameri- 
can citizen?" I asked. 

"Yes," Porter declared. "The State Department 
will refer our case to Mark Hanna. He will investi- 
gate our party affiliations. It will then be referred 



78 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

to the bureau of immigration, and by that time we 
will all be shot." 

Flight was our only recourse. We started toward 
the beach. As we ran a little Carib girl about 15 
came scooting out from a hedge and hurled herself 
against me. She was crying and talking and clutch- 
ing my arm. I couldn't understand a word she was 
saying. Porter tried a little Spanish. 

"The little girl is in great distress," he said. "She 
is saying something entirely beyond my comprehen- 
sion of the Spanish language. I gather that she 
wants to be one of our party." 

Scarcely were the words out of her mouth when a 
burly fellow much bigger than the natives broke 
through the hedge and grabbed the tiny creature by 
the hair. It interrupted our conversation. I landed 
him a smash on the head with my 45 gun. 

Just then a signal rang out. It was the call to 
arms. The army was after us. 

Porter, Frank and I, with the little maid at our 
heels, made for the beach. Porter stopped a moment 
to ask the little Carib, in the gravest English, her 
pardon for his haste. He had a most pressing en- 
gagement, he said, some 2,000 miles away. She was 
not satisfied and stood shrieking on the beach while 
we rowed out to the Helena. 

It bothered Porter. Years afterward, when we 
were together in New York, he recalled the incident. 

"Remember that little strip of brown muslin that 
fluttered down the street after us in Trojillo? I 
wondered what she was saying." 

He didn't hke "unfinished stories." 



WITH O. HENRY 79 

Bill, the newfound friend, had thrown in his lot 
with us. He didn't have a cent in the world. He 
didn't know where we were going or who we were. 

"What is your destination?" he asked quietly, as 
the Helena steamed up. 

"I left America to avoid my destination," I told 
him. 

"How far can you go?" 

"As far as $30,000 will take us." 

It took us farther than we reckoned. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Voyaging at leisure; the grand ball in Mexico City; O. Henry's gallantry; 
the don's rage; O. Henry saved from the Spaniard's knife. 

Like aimless drifters in a boat that has neither 
rudder nor compass, we started on that tour of in- 
vestigation. We planned to loll along, stopping as 
we would, looking for a pleasant soil in which to plant 
ourselves. But we made not the slightest effort to 
map our course. 

And then suddenly, across that idle way, there 
rippled a Httle stick of chance, an incident so trivial 
and insignificant we scarcely noticed it. In a moment 
it had broken the waters and our boat was all but 
wrecked by the unconsidered wisp. Bill Porter nearly 
lost his life for a smile! 

The captain of the Helena was at our service. We 
stopped at Buenos Aires and rode out through the 
pampas country, but it did not attract us. 

Peru was no more alluring. We were looking for 
big game. And the mighty pastime of this realm was 
the shooting of the Asiatic rats that stampeded the 
wharves. 

For no particular reason, two of us being acknowl- 
edged fugitives and the third a somewhat mysterious 
soldier of fortune, we stopped off at Mexico City. We 
knew Porter only as Bill. I had told him the main 
facts of my life. He did not return the confidence 



WITH 0. HENRY 81 

and we did not seek it. Neither Frank nor I placed 
him in our own class. He was secretive, but we did 
not attribute the trait to any sinister cause. With 
the romance of the cowpuncher I figured that this 
fine, companionable fellow was troubled with an un- 
happy love affair. 

We had loafed along, deliberately dodging issues. 
At the Hotel De Republic fate turned the little 
trick that compelled us to change our course. 

I was sitting in the lobby waiting for Frank and 
Porter. Something hke a clutch on my arm struck 
through my listlessness. It was a breath-taking mo- 
ment. I felt a presence near. I feared to look up. 
Then a gigantic hand reached down to me. Jumbo 
Rector, idol of cadet days in Virginia, had picked me 
to my feet. 

Rector was six feet six. I reached a bit above his 
elbow. We had been the long and the short of it in 
every devilment pulled in college. If there was one 
man on the earth I was glad to see at that moment it 
was this buoyant, healthy-hearted Samson, 

Rector had built the Isthmian railroad. He had 
a palace of white stone and he brought us bag and 
baggage to his hacienda. That night I told him the 
things that had happened in the 16 years since we 
parted. 

"Who is this friend of yours, this Bill?" he asked 
me later. "Are you sure of him? He looks to me 
like a detective." 

"I don't like your friend Rector," Porter confided 
the same night. "He has a most unpleasant way of 
scrutinizing one." 



82 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Not many days later both Porter and I had proof 
of Rector's worth. The antipathy between the two 
was but superficial. There was to be a grand ball 
at the hotel. All the notables, Porfirio Diaz, the 
cabinet, the senoritas and the dons were to be present. 
Rector had us all invited. 

We went through preparations as elaborate as a 
debutante's. Rector loaned us his tailor, and the 
three of us were outfitted in faultless evening attire. 
As we were dressing I slipped on my shoulder scab- 
bard. Frank and Rector ridiculed me. 

"Let him wear his side arms," Porter jibed. 
"There should be one gentleman in the party." 

"I guarantee you won't need them tonight," 
Rector promised. 

I took them off, but reluctantly. I came back later 
and slipped the six-shooter into my trousers' belt. 
That precaution saved the "Four Million" and all her 
treasured successors for America. 

Porter looked a prince that night. Always fas- 
tidious about his person, the full dress enhanced his 
air of distinction. He was a figure to arrest attention 
in any gathering. 

And he was in one of his most inconsequent, ban- 
tering moods. We stood against the column comment- 
ing on the dress of the dons and the Americans. The 
Spaniards, in their silk stockings and the gay-colored 
sashes about their slick-fitting suits, seemed to Porter 
to harmonize with the beauty and the music of the 
scene. 

"These people have poetry in their make-up," he 
said. "What an interesting spectacle they make. 



WITH O. HENRY 83 

As if to illustrate his words, the handsomest couple 
on the floor swung past. If ever there was a flaw- 
less job turned out by God it was that Spanish don. 
There were a hundred years of culture behind the 
charm in his manner ; the grace in his walk. He was 
slimly made, quick and elegant. He had a face of 
chisled perfection. 

The don's partner was a girl of most extraordinary 
beauty — unusual and compelHng. Her red hair, her 
magnificent blue eyes and her pearl-white skin stood 
out, among so many dark faces, as something touched 
with an unnatural radiance. She wore a lavender 
gown. She had the color and the witchery of a living 
opal. 

I turned to call Bill's attention. The girl had 
noticed him. As she passed she gave the faintest toss 
of her head and a smile that was more in the tail of 
her eye than on her lip. With the deference due to a 
queen, Porter smiled and made a courtly bow. The 
don stiffened, but not a muscle of his handsome face 
twitched. I knew that the incident was not closed. 

"Bill, you're making a mistake. You're breeding 
trouble among these people," I told him. 

"Colonel, I feel that that would enliven the occa- 
sion." The imperturable, hushed tone gave no indi- 
cation of the reckless devilment of his mood. Porter 
was as full of whims as an egg is of meat. 

"Sir, I see that you are a stranger here," a voice 
that was mellow as thick cream addressed us. It was 
the don. His smile would have been a warning to 
any man but Bill Porter. "You are not accustomed 
to our ways. I regret that I have not the honor of 



84. THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

your acquaintance. Had I that honor I should be 
glad to introduce you to the senorita. Since I can- 
not claim the privilege, I beg you to desist in your 
attentions to my affianced." 

The Enghsh was perfect. The don bowed and 
walked leisurely off. His flow of gentility won me. 
I could not help comparing him to the money-grab- 
bing, flat-footed boors that decorate an American 
ballroom. The Castilian seemed to me worthy of 
respect. Porter was not at all impressed by his 
request. 

The grand march passed again. I do not know 
what devilment possessed the girl. It seemed to run 
like an electric current from her to Porter. As she 
stepped toward him she dropped her mantilla — so 
lightly, so deftly, that it did not even arrest the at- 
tenion of the don. 

Porter stooped down, picked it up, held it a mo- 
ment and then passed behind the couple. He flashed 
a glance of joyous chivalry at the senorita, bowed 
and handed the lace directly to her. 

"Senorita, you dropped this, did you not?" he said. 
She took it and smiled. Never was Bill Porter more 
magnetic than that night. 

"Now you've played hell," I said. He had com- 
mitted a mortal breach, and he knew it. Spanish 
etiquette demanded that the presentation be made 
to the don, who would thank him for the senorita. 

"I've played everything else," he answered undis- 
turbed. The incident had passed. It was at least 10 
minutes later. Neither of us saw the don coming 
until he stood like a tiger before Porter. With a 



WITH O. HENRY 85 

sweep that was lightning, he brought his open hand 
down in a ringing blow full across Porter's face. 

The blow was so sudden, so full of swift animal 
fury, it knocked Porter against the column. The 
don drew back, brushing his hand in scornful con- 
tempt. The by-standers stood aghast at the stinging 
humiliation of the patrician stranger. 

It was but the breath of an instant. Porter leaped 
up, his broad shoulders hunched forward, his face 
crimson with rage. On his cheek, four livid welts 
stood out like white blisters. In that scene of ex- 
quisite culture, the ferocity of the jungle was un- 
leashed. 

Like a mad bull. Porter sprang for the don, strik- 
ing right and left. 

The don hurled himself forward, gripping Porter 
a}»out the waist. Something flashed. The next sec- 
end, his stiletto was driving straight for Porter's 
throat. 

It was Bill's life or the don's. 

I fired in the Spaniard's face. 

The sudden roar went like dynamite through the 
ballroom. The don fell, Porter stood as though hewn 
of stone, a look of white horror frozen to his face. 
From everywhere voices whispered and all at once 
raised into a mighty protest. 

Out from the corridors two men dashed the crowd 
aside, charging upon us. Rector swept me into his 
gigantic arms as though I were a kitten. Frank 
caught Porter and pushed him hurriedly from the 
room. 

Rector's carriage stood waiting. We were hustled 



86 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

into it. The most dismal ride of my life began. Not 
a word was said. Porter sat like a man stricken cold 
with staggering dismay. 

Frank slumped down in one corner, sullen with an- 
ger, recoiling from me as though I had done an evil 
thing. It lashed me as a torment. I felt their tense 
nervousness, but I felt justified as well. 

I had not killed deliberately. I had acted only to 
save Bill. The death of the don did not trouble me. 
Porter's quiet stung like a wasp bite. I wanted some- 
one to tell me I had done the right thing. 

Resentment and an unbearable irritation against all 
of them bit into me. I felt as though I were in the 
"Black Maria" on the way to the scaffold. An op- 
pressive hush weighed like a suffocating hot breath 
upon us. 

The carriage swung through a narrow lane of 
palms. The trees looked hke upraised black swords. 
The monotonous clatter of the hoofbeats was the 
only sound. The silence seemed an intentional re- 
proach to me. 

"Damned ingratitude" — I hissed out the words 
more to myself than to them. Porter stirred and 
leaned forward. His hand went out and caught mine. 
I felt immediately at peace. No word could have 
filled me with the satisfaction of that warm, expres- 
sive clasp. 

For miles we rode silently, swiftly. Not a com- 
ment! Rector lit a cigar. In the soft match-light, 
I caught a glimpse of Porter's face. 

It was still struck with that shocked look of re- 
pugnance as though he were recoiHng from himself 



WITH O. HENRY 87 

and the thoughtless caprice that had precipitated the 
ugly tragedy. It was such an unfair consequence of 
that moment of bantering gaiety. 

In a mood of unwonted levity he had answered the 
challenge in a smile. It was an ordinary ballroom 
episode. And for that pleasantry he was crushed 
down with this overwhelming disaster. 

The big misfortunes of his life seem all to have 
come upon him with as little invitation. The law 
of cause and effect in his case worked in an inscru- 
table fashion. 

When Porter put out his hand to me the tragedy 
was over as far as I was concerned. To him it was 
always a hideous memory. 

Once he alluded to it. We were sitting together 
in the warden's office in the Ohio penitentiary. 

"That night," he said, "was the most terrible in 
my life." I could not understand. That the don 
should die if Porter were to live seemed clearly in- 
evitable. 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Colonel, I was as guilty as a murderer," he said. 

"You're not sorry it was the don who went down?" 
His version stung me. 

"I've always regretted it," he answered. 

His regret was not for the don's death so much 
as for the failure of his own life. I think that many 
times Porter would have welcomed death to the gall- 
ing humiliation of prison life. 

If we could have stayed in Mexico all of us might 
have escaped the shadows of unhappy pasts. We 
were hurried out and none of us wished to leave. 



88 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Down toward the peninsula, about 50 miles south- 
west of Mexico City, the richest valley in the world 
lay. We had looked it over. 

It was to have been our home. Things grew there 
almost spontaneously. Bananas, corn, alligator 
pears asked only to be planted. The palms were 
magnificent. 

"Here," Porter said when we had decided to pur- 
chase it, "one could work and dream out his imagery." 
I did not know what he meant. I learned when I 
read "Cabbages and Kings." Here, too, Frank and 
I hoped to reestablish ourselves. Each had his own 
dream. 

In that silent ride the vision passed. To Frank 
and to me it was but another misadventure in lives 
already overcrowded. Neither of us realized that a 
bitter crisis had been reached in the life of the reti- 
cent, droU-tongued fellow, "Bill." 

We never dreamed that prison waited for him as 
it did for us. We never thought that this born aris- 
tocrat would one day be compelled to eat at a "hog 
trough" with thieves and murderers and to bend his 
pride to the ignorant scowl of a convict guard. Por- 
ter, I think, knew that the die was cast for him when 
we left Mexico. 

If we could have planted ourselves in that miracu- 
lous valley he might have escaped the forbidding 
future awaiting him. He could have sent for his 
daughter. He would have avoided the shame of that 
striped suit — the shame that wore into his heart and 
broke his life up in wretchedness. 

But he smiled lightly at the don's sefiorita, and 



WITH O. HENRY 89 

consequences hurled him back to face the issues he 
had dodged. 

It is easy now to understand the look of rigid hor- 
ror on his face as we got down at Rector's home. 

Jumbo poured whiskey for us and tried to lighten 
our mood. Porter was so unstrung that when the 
coachman knocked to tell us the team was ready he 
reeled and seemed about to collapse. 

"Don't worry," Rector said as he shook hands. 
"Everything will be all right. You can trust this 
driver. I'm going back to the hotel. I will tell the 
officers you are at my home. It will give you a fair 
start." 

We went to a little way station on the Tampico 
road, later caught a tramp steamer at Mazatlan and 
finally arrived at San Diego, striking out on a flying 
trip to San Francisco, We never got there. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

In California; the bank-robbery; O. Henry's refusal; purchase of a 
ranch; coming of the marshals; flight and pursuit; the 
trap ; capture at last. 

O. Henry has been called a democrat, a citizen of 
the world. The laboratory wherein he caught and 
dissected the hearts of men and women was in the 
alleys and honkatonks. He sought to interpret life 
in the raw, not in the superficial livery disguising it 
on the broad ways. The under dog was his subject 
But at heart he was an aristocrat. 

He had all the proud sensitiveness of the typical 
Southern gentleman. He liked to mingle with the 
masses; he was not one of them. Gladly he threw in 
his lot with a pair of bandits and fugitives. It would 
have cut him to the soul to have been branded as one 
of them. 

For his haughty nature, the ramble from Mexico 
to San Diego and up the coast to San Francisco was 
fraught with disagreeable suspense. It was humiliat- 
ing to "be on the dodge." 

I will never forget the look of chagrin that spread 
over his face when I bumped against him and Frank 
just as the ferry boat was swinging into the shp. 

"Sneak," I said. "They're here." 

The chief of the Wells Fargo detectives was on 
the boat. He had brushed against my arm. Before 
he had an opportunity to renew old acquaintance, I 



WITH O. HENRY 91 

sauntered over to Frank and Porter. Wells Fargo 
had many uncollected claims against me. I was not 
ready for the settlement. Captain Dodge was prob- 
ably unaware of my presence. We could not afford 
to take any chances. We stayed on the boat and it 
brought us back to Oakland. 

Bill was a trifle upset. He insisted on staking 
us all to a drink, although he had to borrow the 
money from me to pay for the treat. Texas seemed 
to be the only safe camping ground for us. 

With about $417 left from our capital of $30,000, 
we landed in San Antonio, still hankering for the 
joys of simple range life. There I met an old cow- 
man friend of mine and he took us out to his ranch. 
Fifty miles from the town it ran into low hills and 
valleys, prairies and timber. A finer strip of coun- 
try no peeler would ask. The cowman offered us 
range, cattle and horses for $15,000. 

It was a bargain. Frank and I decided to snap 
it up. Financial arrangements, the cowman assured 

us, could be made with the bank in , 

several hundred miles distant. In the safe there was 
at least $15,000, and it could be easily removed. This 
was a straight tip. 

It was a peculiar situation. Frank and I had both 
decided to quit the outlaw life. But we hadn't a 
cent and there was but one way to gather a quick 
haul. The fine fervor of reformation had lost its 
early ardor. Necessity completed the cooling process. 

But we were a little worried about Porter. What- 
ever may have been his reasons for staying with us 
we were confident that Bill was not a lawbreaker. 



92 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

The very thing that decided us to take him into 
our confidence was his pride. We knew he needed 
the money. We knew it humiliated him to borrow. 

I had given him many and various sums since our 
flight from Honduras. These were always accepted 
as loans. We didn't want Bill to be under an obli- 
gation to us. We wanted him to earn his interest 
in the ranch. 

The square thing was to invite him to go into the 
banking venture. If you had seen Bill Porter's face 
then and the helpless surprise that scooted across it, 
you would believe as I do that he was never guilty 
of the theft which sent him for nearly four years of 
his Hfe to the Ohio Penitentiary. He had neither 
recklessness nor the sangfroid of the lawbreaker. 

Just about evening I went down to the corral. 
Porter was sitting there enjoying the quiet peace. 
He was rolling a corn-shuck cigarette. 

He looked happier and more at ease than at any 
time since the shooting of the don. I suppose I 
should have broached the subject mildly. The satis- 
fying dreariness of this October night was not sug- 
gestive of crime or robbery. But the gentleness of 
the Madonna would not have lured Bill Porter into 
the scheme. 

"Bill," I said, "we're going to buy the ranch for 
$15,000 and we want you to come in with us on the 
deal." 

He paused with his cigarette half rolled. 

"Colonel," he said, "I would like nothing better 
than to settle in this magnificent country, and to live 
here unafraid and unmolested. But I have no funds." 



WITH O. HENRY 93 

"That's just it. Neither have we. We're about 

to get them. Down there in , there's a bank 

with $15,000 in its vaults. That money ought to be 
put into circulation." 

The tobacco dropped from the paper. Porter 
looked up quickly and searched my face. He saw 
that I was in earnest. He was not with us, but not 
for a fortune would he wound us or even permit me 
to think that he judged us. 

"Colonel — " This time his large eyes twinkled. It 
was seldom that he smiled. I never heard him laugh 
but twice. "I'd like a share in this range. But tell 
me, would I have to shoot anybody?" 

"Oh, perhaps so, but most likely not." 

"Well, give me the gun. If I go on the job I 
want to act like an expert. I'll practice shooting." 

No outlaw would ever ask another for his forty-five. 
The greatest compliment a cowpuncher can give the 
man he trusts is to hand over his gun for inspection. 

Porter took the honor lightly. He handled the 
gun as though it were a live scorpion. I forgot to 
warn him that I had removed the trigger and the 
gun would not stay cocked. By this device I could 
shoot faster at close range, gaining a speed almost 
equal to the modern automatic. 

Like all amateurs, Bill put his thumb on the ham- 
mer and pulled it back. Then he started walking 
back and forth with the forty-five in his hand and his 
hand dropped to his side. Without intending to, he 
shifted his grip, releasing his thumb from the hammer. 

There was a sudden, sharp explosion, a little geyser 
of earth spurted upward. When it cleared there was 



94 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

a hole as big as a cow's head scooped in the ground. 
My forty-five lay in the depression. Porter, scared 
but unhurt, stood staring over it. 

"Colonel," he looked up at me a little abashed, "I 
think I would be a hindrance on this financial un- 
dertaking." * 

I wanted Porter to go with us. We didn't need 
him, but I had already grown very fond of the moody, 
reticent, cultured fellow. I didn't want him to be 
dependent on us and I wanted his company on the 
range. 

"Well, you needn't take the gun. You just stay 
outside and hold the horses. We really need you 
for that. • 

He hesitated a moment. 

"I don't believe I could even hold the horses," he 
answered. 

Troubled and fearful lest we should never return, 
he bade us good-bye. I did not know until the deal 
was closed and the ranch ours, the days of worry and 
misery that Bill Porter suffered while Frank and 
I went down to take up the matter with the bank. 

We left Porter, harried with anxiety, at the Hotel 
Plaza in San Antonio. Frank and I and the rancher 
rode into . 

Our plan was simple. The cowman was to attract 
the attention of the marshals while we cleaned out 
the bank's vault. 

The bank stood on a corner opposite the public 
square. The cowman went quietly to a bench to wait 
for the signal from me. I pulled out my handkerchief 
and began mopping my face. He opened fire, shoot- 



WITH O. HENRY 95 

ing like a lunatic into the air. Men and women ran 
into the saloons, stores, houses. The officials hurried 
over to the crazy cowman. 

Frank and I walked into the bank, stuck up the 
cashier and compelled the delivery of $15,560 in cur- 
rency. The rancher, charged with drunkenness, was 
arrested, fined and released. Frank and I left the 
bank as quietly as the next-door merchant might have. 
The ruse worked. 

We went straight to the ranch and then doubled 
back to San Antonio. It was about two days since 
we had left Porter. He was not ordinarily a warm- 
spoken man, but when he saw us he put out his hand 
and his voice was rich with suppressed emotion. 

"Colonel, congratulations. This is indeed a happy 
moment. I was so troubled in your absence." From 
Bill Porter that greeting was more expressive than 
the gustiest tribute from the glib-tongued. Porter's 
stories are crowded with colorful slang. His own 
speech was invariably pure and correct. 

All of us knew that the parting had come. If Bill 
could not rob with us he could not settle down on 
the range bought with our stolen bills. 

I have never relished farewells. I did not want 
to probe into Porter's soul. He had never said a 
word about his past. He had not even told us his 
name. But little as I wished to quiz him, I was eager 
to know his identity. I did not want to lose track of 
him forever. 

"Bill," I said, "here's where we split out. We're 
getting on mighty familiar soil. There's likely to be 
trouble enough some day. Something may turn up. 



96 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

I'd like to write to you. I might want your advice." 

"I haven't been very frank with you, have I?" he 
answered. "I'm sorry." 

Such reticence, I felt, was more than a shield for 
an unhappy love-affair. Porter's troubles, I knew, 
must be deeper than I had suspected. 

*'Good-bye, colonel; may we meet happily again," 
he said. 

And the next time I saw him, nearly three years 
later, the very word "happy" was stricken from his 
vocabulary. 

Frank and I went out to our ranch. For six 
months we lived in free and profitable industry. Sud- 
denly an old, familiar face peered in at our window. 
"Mex," a bandit friend, had tracked our haunt. 
Other faces appeared on the range and dodged again. 
The marshals had located us. 

Frank, Mex and I escaped. For weeks we rode 
from range to range. Hunger spurred us. There 
were more robberies. And then there was the Rock 
Island daylight holdup. We had counted on a clean 
haul of $90,000 from the express car. Our dynamite 
failed to break the safe. We were cheated on the 
transaction. 

It was our most futile venture. It led to our cap- 
ture. The stickup was counted the boldest in outlaw 
exploits. Armed bands patrolled the country for the 
"Jennings gang." In December, '97, they caught us. 

We had gone back to the old Spike S, the range 
where I had first met and joined the outlaws, the 
range where the M., K. and T. robbery was planned. 
We were waiting the arrival of "Little Dick." 



WITH O. HENRY 97 

There came a knock at the door. The wind was 
howling hke a fiend outside. Mrs. Harliss went to 
the porch. A man, covered with dirt, his eyes swollen 
almost shut, his coat dripping with rain, asked shelter. 
He was a ranchman who lived some miles away. 
That night he came as a spy. We were his quarry. 

All of us felt the "closing of the trap." We had 
nothing but our suspicions to work on. The rancher 
was a friend of the Harliss folk. We could not hold 
him. 

But none of us went to bed that night. 

The sun came blazing out brilliant but cold the 
next morning. Mrs. Harliss went down to the cis- 
tern for water. She came rushing back, her shawl 
gone, her hair blowing in the wind. 

"The marshals are here! We'll all be killed!" 

Frank and Bud hurled themselves downstairs, 
Winchesters in their hands. Mrs. Harliss grabbed 
her little brother in her arms and ran to the front; 
door. I started out through the kitchen window. 

Bullets tore the knobs off the front door. The first 
volley splintered glass in my face. We got to a little 
box-house just outside the ranch home. There were 
three rooms downstairs, one up. The shots went 
through the house as though it were cardboard. 

Bullets broke the dishes on the table, smashed the 
stove, dashed the pictures off the wall. Three of 
us were hit. We were surrounded on three sides. 
Marshals were in the barn to the northeast, the log 
house to the north and the rocks and timber to the 
northwest; a little peach orchard skirted the south. 
Beyond that was open prairie. 



98 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

We fought for 40 minutes, until our rickety fortress 
was all but shattered. Then we hit for the prairie, 
firing as we ran. They didn't dare to track us into 
the open spaces. 

Just across the Duck Creek we stopped to bind our 
wounds. I was shot above the knee, the bullet lodg- 
ing in the bone. Bud was shot in the shoulder, and 
Bill had a gash that looked like a dog bite in his 
thigh. Frank's clothes had 27 holes in the coat. He 
was not even scratched. 

Up in the mountains: we prepared for a "last 
stand." We hid all day. It was blue cold. Be- 
tween us we had two apples. That was our fare for 
three days. The marshals didn't follow. 

We recrossed the creek, took a couple of Indians 
and their pony team prisoners and made for the 
Canadian Biver bed. My wound swelled. I had 
to rip it open twice with my penknife to get relief. 
We made straight for Benny Price's house. He had 
been a friend of ours before the outlaw days. He 
took us in and gave us a good meal. We could not 
stay without menacing his welfare. 

There was another friend there, a horsethief named 
Baker. He came down and gave us a wagon. Frank 
did not trust him. He would not go. Bud, Bill and 
I got into the covered wagon. Baker was to drive 
us to his house. Bill seemed to be dying with his 
wounds. Bud and I were both unconscious. I came 
to. Someone was sitting on the driver's seat. 

"Who is it?" I asked. 

"Me, damn it I" Frank answered. "Let's get out 
of this." 



WITH O. HENRY 99 

While we were unconscious, Baker sent word to 
Frank that I wanted him. He had come. Baker 
drove us into the timber, into the trap, and left us 
vowing that we were on the right road. A felled 
tree lay athwart the path. Bill was dying. Bud 
and I, but half conscious, were dozing in the bottom 
of the wagon. Frank had scrambled out to move 
the tree. 

The cordon of mapshals, six-shooters cocked, sprang 
about us. 

"Jennings, surrender!" 

About ten to one, they had us. 

It took nearly two years before sentence was 
passed. I was given five years on a charge of as- 
sault with intent to kill a deputy. In another dis- 
trict I was found guilty of the Rock Island holdup 
and given life imprisonment. I was sent to the Ohio 
penitentiary. 

The mystery of fate had brought me to the home 
of Bill Porter. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

In the Ohio Penitentiary; horrors of prison life; in and out of Banker's 
Row; a visit from O. Henry, fellow convict; promise of help. 

In prison men live unnatural lives. Brutal asso- 
ciations are forced upon them. They are fed at a 
hog trough, locked into stifling cells and denied all 
wholesome communication with right-living people. 
The devices employed to crush out the better instincts 
are monstrous beyond the conception of healthy- 
minded men and women. 

The confinement cramps and yellows even the city 
man. The outlaw, used to the big freedom of the 
plains and the mountains, is a doomed man once he 
steps inside the gray stone walls. 

As soon as I felt the heavy breath of the prison — 
the breath laden with evil smells, charged with bitter 
curses, pulsing with hushed resentment — the beast 
reared within me. 

My arrival had been heralded by every newspaper 
in the State. Every man in the prison knew it. Two 
train-robbers, former friends of mine on the outside, 
wanted to renew old acquaintance. By some crook, 
they managed to pass me in the corridor. 

They were as ghosts. For a moment I could not 
recall them. Like white shadows, long and bent, they 
ghded past. One year in the penitentiary had evapo- 



WITH O. HENRY 101 

rated the life from their bodies. Thej^ came in husky 
giants. They went out wasted ^vrecks. 

And then there was my first meal. The odor of 
slumgulHon, of putrid meat, of milHons of flies, 
surged in an overpowering wave upon me as the door 
of the dining-room opened. I sat on a stool between 
two sweaty negroes, who were more like gorillas than 
men. 

There was the clatter of tin, the shuffle of uneasy 
feet, the waving of upraised hands signaling the 
guards for bread. Xo sound of the human voice, but 
that God-forsaken, weighty, brutal dumbness im- 
posed upon convicts in the penitentiary. 

At each place there was a tin of stew. Maggots 
floated in the gravy. A hunk of bread and a saucer 
of molasses and flies filled out the menu. I had 
been used to coarse fare. This stinking filth sick- 
ened me. 

A burly, red-faced fellow opposite leaned over, his 
face almost in his plate, and shoveled in the noisome 
stew. He raised two fingers. A trusty came do^vn, 
a great dishpan hung from his neck. With one 
swipe he ladled out a scoop of the foul mess and splat- 
tered it on the red feUow's plate. 

Every time the guards helped a prisoner they 
whacked the food down so that bits of the meat or 
fluid spattered. Some of the gra\y splashed across 
the narrow board and slopped in my face. In an 
instant I was on my feet. The negro at my side 
pulled me down. 

"Doan want yoah 'lasses?" he asked. I pushed 
it over to him. 



102 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

He put in his thumb, jabbed out the flies, smudged 
them on the table, and ate. 

Shoved into the cell for the night, I felt that I 
was forgotten by all the world. The cell was in 
reality a stone vault, four by eight feet. It had no 
window. The only ventilation came from the barred 
door that opened on the closed corridor. There were 
two straw ticks on wooden shelves. These were the 
bunks. Another man shared the fetid hole with me. 

The cells were entirely without sanitary equip- 
ment. On Saturday night the men were locked up 
and kept in this stifling confinement until Monday 
morning. Two men sleeping, breathing, tramping 
about in a walled space four by eight for 36 hours 
turned that closet into a hell. It was no longer air 
that filled the place, but a reeking stench. 

When the first Monday morning came I decided 
to move. I had been placed in the transfer office. 
Few prisoners are qualified to act as clerks. I was 
given this office position the day after my arrival. 
It was my business to keep a check on all the men, 
to tabulate all transfers from one cell to another 
and to check up on all releases. Not an official nor 
a clerk could leave the prison until every convict 
was accounted for. 

There' was one cell block called the "Bankers' 
Row." It was fitted up for the privileged convicts. 
These high financiers were gentlemen. They had 
not held up trains and, at the risk of life and limb, 
robbed the State of $20,000 or $40,000. 

They had sat in well-furnished offices and lolled 
in easy chairs while they did their thieving. They 



WITH O. HENRY 103 

were polite about it when they filched the funds 
entrusted to them by laborers, small investors, work- 
ing girls. 

They ground hundreds of struggling families un- 
der heel, but they were careful to conceal the blood 
stains. They had pilfered in millions. 

They were entitled to consideration. They got it. 

Cells in Bankers' Row were neat parlors compared 
to the vaults in the I. IST. K. block, where I was 
settled. They had mirrors, a curtain on the door and 
a carpet on the floor. One of the exclusive convicts 
was discharged. I transferred myself into his cell. 

When I appeared in the select promenade in the 
morning my hickory shirt called for comment. The 
bankers were all prison clerks. They were permitted 
to wear white shirts. An elegant, pursy- faced, cor- 
pulent bundle of Southern gentility accosted me. 
His bank had "failed" for $2,000,000. 

"Good morning, sah. You are a banker, I pre- 
sumef 

"Yes," I answered. 

"National?" He was merely interested in a col- 
league. 

"Not particularly. I robbed any and all of them. 
You are an embezzler?" 

The magnate from New Orleans spluttered out 
his surprised disgust. His neat face was crimson 
with resentment. 

"I am heah." 

"Yes, sah; so am I," I answered. 

"I think there must be a mistake." He walked 
off haughtily. 



104 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"So do I. I am going back with the horse-thieves, 
where I'll be among gentlemen." 

My departure was more precipitous than I had 
planned. A jealous convict "snitched." The deputy 
warden sent for me. 

"Who transferred you?" he asked. 

"The transfer clerk," I answered. Lucky for me 
the deputy was in a good humor. 

"What for?" 

"A good bed, a carpet, some clean air." 

"Those rooms are for bankers," he informed me. 

"I'm a banker." 

"Not their sort. They didn't terrify with a gun. 
You go back to your own range. They might steal 
what you've got." 

So I went back to my hole. I had grown used 
to prison bread. I learned how to skim the worms 
out of the stew. I could do without molasses. But 
I could not endure the Sundays. They left me 
weak, stifled, murderous. The fourth one since my 
arrival dawned. 

Every Sunday in the Ohio penitentiary an at- 
tendant from the hospital visited the cells dispens- 
ing pills and quinine. The allotment was always 
given to the prisoners whether they needed them or 
not. 

The hospital attendant was standing at my door. 
I felt his glance, but I did not meet it. And then 
a voice, hushed and measured, that to me seemed 
like sunlight breaking through a cloud, sounded in 
my ear. 

The low rich tones rippled through the black prison 



WITH O. HENRY 105 

curtain. The waving prairies and the soft hills of 
the Texas ranch; the squat bungalow at Honduras, 
the tropical valley of Mexico; the magnificent scene 
in the ballroom was before me. 

"Colonel, we meet again." 

In all my life there has never been a tenser mo- 
ment than when Bill Porter spoke that simple greet- 
ing. It caught me like a stab in the heart. I felt 
like crying. I could not bear to look him in the face. 

I did not want to see Bill Porter in convict stripes. 
For months we shared the same purse, the same bread, 
the same glass. We had traveled through South 
America and Mexico together. Not a word had he 
said of his past. And here it was torn open for me to 
see and the secret he had kept so quietly shouted out 
in his gray, prison suit with the black band running 
down the trousers. The proudest man I have ever 
known was standing outside a barred door, dispensing 
quinine and pills to jailbirds. 

"Colonel, we have the same tailor, but he does not 
provide us with the same cut of clothes," the old 
droll, whimsical voice drawled without a chuckle. I 
looked into the face that would have scorned to show 
its emotion. It was still touched with grave, impres- 
sive hauteur, but the clear eyes, in that moment, 
seemed filmed and hurt. 

I think it was about the only time in my life I did 
not feel like talking. Bill was looking at my ill-fitting 
hand-me-downs. I had received the castoff clothes of 
some other prisoner. They hung on me like the flap- 
ping rags on a scarecrow. The sleeves were rolled up 
and the trousers tucked back. My shoes were four 



106 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

sizes too large. When I walked, it sounded like the 
clatter of a horse brigade. 

"But you'll soon be promoted to the first rank," 
Porter said. He had deliberately sought the task 
of dispensing the pills in order to get me a word of 
advice. 

"Colonel — " He spoke quickly. Conservation was 
forbidden. ' The guard might come into the range at 
any moment. "Be careful of the friends you choose. 
On the outside it may be safe to pick up acquaint- 
ances at every siding. I'm glad you were sociably 
inclined at Honduras. The O. P. is a different coun- 
try. Have no confidants." 

It was valuable advice. I would have escaped six 
months of torture in solitary confinement had I heed- 
ed it. 

"And when you graduate into the first grade, I'll 
see what 'pull' can do for you. There may be a 
chance to have you transferred to the hospital." 

That was all. The stealthy footfall of the guard 
brushed along the corridor. We looked at each other 
a moment. Porter flipped a few pills into my hand 
and carelessly walked off. 

As he left, the utter isolation of the prison was 
intensified. The cell walls seemed heaving together, 
closing me into a black pit. I felt that I would never 
see Bill Porter again. 

He had said nothing of himself. I knew that he 
was convicted on a charge of embezzlement. I never 
asked him about it. One day in New York, years 
later, he alluded to it. He was shaving in his room 
in the Caledonia Hotel. We were talking of old 



WITH O. HENRY 107 

times in the Ohio penitentiary. He wanted me to 
tell him of a bank-robbery we had pulled in the out- 
law days. 

"Bill, what did you fall for?" I asked. He turned 
upon me a look of quizzical humor, rubbed the lather 
into his chin, and waited a moment before he an- 
swered. 

"Colonel, I have been expecting that question, lo, 
these many years. I borrowed four from the bank 
on a tip that cotton would go up. It went down, 
and I got five." 

It was but another of his quips. Porter, I be- 
lieve, and all of his friends share the confidence, was 
innocent of the charge laid against him. He was 
accused of misappropriating about $1,100 from the 
First National Bank of Austin. He had been rail- 
roaded to prison. I believe it. 

It was not his guilt that I thought of as he stood 
at my door that Sunday morning, but his buoyant 
friendship and the odd, delightful gravity of his 
quiet speech. He held me as he had the first day 
I met him in the Honduras cantina 

But as he left, a thought full of a stinging irri- 
tation wedged itself into these happier memories. I 
had been in prison nearly four weeks. Bill Porter 
knew it. Every one in the penitentiary knew it. 
He had taken his time about visiting me. Had it 
been me, I would have rushed to see him at the first 
opportunity. 

I tried to make out a brief for him. Porter was 
a valuable man in prison. He had been a pharma- 
cist in Greensboro before entering the bank at Aus- 



108 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

tin. This experience won him the envied position 
of drug clerk in the prison hospital. Many privi- 
leges softened the bitterness of convict life. He had 
a good bed, decent food and comparative freedom. 
Why had he failed to visit me? 

He was busy, I know. And he would have gone 
to almost any extremity to avoid asking a favor from 
the guard. It would have cut him to the quick to 
win a refusal from these men who were his inferiors. 
Was he merely waiting his easy opportunity to see 
me? 

I didn't understand Bill Porter then as I learned 
to know him later. I know now the reason for that 
long delay. I can appreciate the goading humilia- 
tion O. Henry suffered when he stood before my cell 
acknowledging himself a criminal even as myself. 
Porter knew my high esteem for him. Always reti- 
cent, it was an aching blow to his pride to meet me 
now, no longer the gentleman, but the fellow convict. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Despair; attempt at escape; in the hell-hole; torture in the prison; the 

diamond-thief's revenge; the flogging; hard labor; a message 

of hope from O. Henry. 

Weeks went by. I didn't see Porter again. The 
promise of help and a position in the hospital, where 
food was good and beds clean, had put a flavor even 
into prison stew. I counted on Porter. Gradually 
the confidence waned. I grew bitter with resentment 
and a cold feeling of abandonment. I had been used 
ragged by every one. It began to eat in on me that 
Bill was one with all the other ingrates I had helped. 

I did not know that he was working for me all 
the while. I did not realize the obstacles that block 
promotion in a prison. I decided to help myself. 
I tried to escape, was caught, sent into solitary for 
14 days and then brought down from the hell-hole for 
trial. 

Dick Price, a convict I had befriended and a life 
termer, tried to save me. While I was sitting on the 
bench outside the deputy warden's room, Dick went 
past me. 

"You've got a fellow Jennings in solitary for try- 
ing to escape. I gave him the saws. He's a new man. 
Ain't been here long enough to know the ropes. I 
wised him up to escape. Give me the punishment." 

Dick spoke in a loud voice. I knew it was a cue 



110 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

for me. He had not given me the saws. He knew 
nothing about the escape until a horse-thief peached 
on me. 

I was called before the deputy. 

"How did you like your new home?" he asked with 
a leer. He meant the "hole" in solitary. "I found 
where you got the saws." 

"Dick Price had nothing to do with it." 

"I thought so," he said. "Dick's a 'mighty good 
boy. Been here a 'mighty long time. Come clean 
on this now and I'll make it easy for you." 

"I can't." 

"You'll have to." 

"I can't." 

"By God, I'll make you." I knew what he meant. 
It made me desperate with fury. 

"By God, you won't." 

"Here, take this fellow down and give him seventy- 
five." 

Only a man who has been in hell's mouth — who has 
seen the blood spurt as men, stripped and chained, 
are beaten until their flesh is torn and broken as a 
derelict, knows the indignity and depravity of a 
prison beating. I saw myself cowed by this scream- 
ing brutaHty. It made a fiend of me. 

"You take me, you damn' coward; you strip me 
and beat me over that trough — try it, and if I live 
through it, I'll come back and cut your damn' throat!" 

The deputy reared from me, his face ashen with 
rage. Like a tortured maniac, I sprang at him. The 
guards rushed forward, made a leap at me, stopped 
abruptly, livid and simpering, as though suddenly 



WITH O. HENRY 111 

stricken. If any one of them had touched me I could 
have torn him to pieces. 

I was ready to be killed outright sooner than sub- 
mit to the horrors of that "punishment cell." I had 
seen too much of it — the prison demon dragged out 
of solitary and whipped into bleeding insensibility a 
couple of times a week — other prisoners given the 
"water" until their faces were one red, gushing stream 
and the anguished screams filled the air. 

The basement where these things were done was 
directly under the hospital. I passed above it and I 
could look down on the way to the transfer office. 
Three weeks before a man had been beaten to death 
over that trough. The awful debauchery of that 
murder had seared into my brain. 

The man was a friend of mine and one of the most 
intelligent convicts in the prison. He was a diamond 
robber — the cleverest crook in the pen, a man of neat 
speech and cultured manner. He had stolen some 
of the most priceless gems in the State. All the de- 
tectives in the country had not been able to locate 
the jewels. The jewelers offered thousands in a re- 
ward for the recovering of the diamonds. No third 
degree, no punishment could force from the man the 
location of his treasure. 

In the prison was an editor, sentenced for the mur- 
der of a rival newspaper publisher. This fellow 
would have crucified his own mother to gain an extra 
crust for himself. He was always worming his way 
into favor by snitching on convicts. For some 
strange reason — perhaps because of their intellectual 
equality, he and the diamond robber became friends. 



112 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

One morning the newspapers carried blazing head- 
lines. The stolen diamonds had been found. The 
robber's secret was out. 

Suspense and a surcharged excitement held the 
prison in a grip. We knew the episode was not 
closed. We waited. 

The diamond robber said nothing. Restless curi- 
osity sent its questions and suppositions across the 
"grapevine route" from one cell block to another. 
"Who had told?" "What would happen?" 

The answer came in a sudden viciousness that re- 
vealed the whole betrayal. The robber sneaked one 
day down the corridor. He had a bottle in his hand. 
He had calculated his time. He fell into line just as 
the editor was going to his cell. 

There was a frenzied scream, a moment's scuffle, a 
loud, prolonged, tormented cry. The editor lay on 
the corridor floor, one eye burned out and his face 
puffed and flaming with the carbolic acid that was 
eating into his flesh. When he came out from the 
hospital he was half blinded and his face, such a 
seamy mass of ugly scars, hell itself wouldn't own 
him. He had won the confidence of the diamond- 
thief and betrayed him. 

"Seventy-five" was the punishment ordered for 
the robber for the assault on a fellow prisoner. He 
was a tall, slender fellow, graceful and muscular — 
made like a white marble statue. 

Prison is not the place for dark dealings. Every 
convict knew in less than an hour that the robber was 
to "get his." I walked out from the transfer office 
and looked down the stairs into the basement. The 



WITH O. HENRY 113 

robber, strapped across the trough, his ankles drawn 
under it, his arms across the top, was already a mass 
of blood. 

He uttered not the slightest moan. None but a 
hell hound — and that's what a guard becomes when 
he has done a thing like this a hundred times — could 
have laid those heavy paddles, with their edges sharp 
as razor blades, across that raw and jagged flesh. 
The robber was beaten to the bone. Long after he 
was unconscious, the merciless flaying went on. 

The guards stopped. Half an hour passed. The 
robber came to. The guards propped him up. The 
deputy warden glowered over him. 

"Now say that you are sorry. Say that you'll obey 
the rules," he thundered. 

The mangled, bleeding victim, who couldn't stand, 
couldn't speak, raised a gray, death-stricken face. 
And after a long pause, a husky curse came from his 
lips. 

" him, I wish I got his other eye." 

They strapped him back to the trough and hacked 
him to death. Broken bones, ragged flesh, they 
struck into it until it doubled a limp mass into the 
trough. 

That's what "seventy-five" meant in the Ohio 
penitentiary in 1899. 

They called me a man-killer. I never murdered a 
man in my life. I shot quick and clean in self-de- 
fense. I would have felt myself a degraded beast to 
have foully killed like that. 

If that warden had carried out his sentence, he 
would have died like a cur. He knew it. 



114 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

I was reduced to the fourth grade, given a suit of 
white with black stripes running horizontally across 
it, put in with the lockstep gang and sent to the bolt 
contract to work. 

The confinement, the isolation, the cruel discipline 
took the spirit out of me. I heard from no one. No 
one was allowed to see me. Papers, books, visitors 
were denied me. 

And then I faked sick just to get a word to Porter. 

The "croaker" was taking my temperature. Bill 
came out of the prescription-room; he was not al- 
lowed to speak to me. His look was enough. Bitter, 
sad, troubled. He nodded to me and turned his back. 
I knew that Bill had tried and failed. He was pow- 
erless to help me. 

I went back to the bolt works. This is the hardest 
labor in the prison. Outside contractors pay the 
State about 30 cents a day for the hire of the men. 
If a given task is not finished on time the convict is 
sent to the hole for punishment. Twice in three days 
"Little Jim," a negro, was given the "water." 

A hose with a nozzle, one-quarter of an inch in 
diameter, sixty pounds pressure behind it, sends a 
stream of terrific force at the prisoner. His head is 
held strapped, the stream that is hard as steel is 
turned full in the man's face, his eyes, his nostrils. 
The pressure compels him to open his mouth. The 
swift, battering deluge tears down his throat and rips 
his stomach in two. No man can stand the "water" 
twice and live. 

Little Jim passed my bench one morning. 

"Mr. Al, they done give Lil Jim the water ag'in," 



WITH O. HENRY 115 

he whispered, walked a step, flopped to the ground, 
a red geyser spouting from his mouth. Before Little 
Jim reached the hospital he was dead. 

After that morning, I was about finished. I lost 
all hope, all ambition. Bill Porter saved me. 

Across the grapevine route he sent his message. 
From one convict to another the word went until it 
was stealthily whispered in my ear: 

"Don't lose heart. I'm working. There's a new 
main finger." 



CHAPTER XVI 

The new main finger; a tuba solo; failure at prayer; transfer to the post- 
office; literary ambition; O. Henry writes a story. 

The new "main finger" meant a new warden and 
an entire change of administration. A shift like this 
sent the prison into feverish, suppressed excitement. 

I was working at the bolt contract. A patrol 
guard glided to my bench in the shop and silently 
beckoned to me. There is something mischievously 
sinister in the hushed voices and the noiseless tread of 
men in prison. Without a word, without even know- 
ing where I was going, I followed. 

I was taken out of the fourth grade when I arrived 
at the State shop. 

"Think you could play a tuba solo Sunday?" the 
guard asked. "You're going back to your place in 
the band." 

Musicians are scarce enough in prison. I had been 
one of the dominant notes in the band before I was 
thrown into solitary. 

Sunday the new warden was to publicly take office. 
Several hundred visitors would be present. The 
warden would make his speech to the 1,700 convicts. 
The prison band would furnish entertainment. 

As I passed through the chaplain's office into the 
hbrary, where the band, met before going to the 



WITH O. HENRY 117 

rostrum. Bill Porter stood at the door. Quite digni- 
fied as always, but his face set, almost despondent, 
Porter greeted me. 

"Colonel, you are looking better. Thank God 
they needed the tuba solo." He lowered the tone 
that was always hesitant and whispering. "I think, 
pardner, you are in a religious fervor. There is a 
vacancy in the chaplain's office. Do you think you 
could pray?" 

I don't know whether I was happier at the pros- 
pect of leaving the bolt shop or in the assurance that 
Porter had won me back in the band and was as 
loyal to me as I would have been to him. 

"Pray! Hell, yes, Bill. Sure I can pray if it 
will get me off the contract." 

How many prayers we offered just to get us "off 
the contract." Porter smiled. 

"Never think that I forget you, colonel. Believe 
me, that my thoughts were with you every time a 
poor, outraged devil sent his screams up from the 
basement." 

I looked at Porter, surprised at the tense emotion 
in his voice. His lips quivered and a sort of gray 
blight seemed spreading over his face. 

"I can't drag out much longer," he said. 

It was one of the few times that Porter ever voiced 
his loathing of the prison system of punishments, and 
yet he knew perhaps more of its ghastly outrages 
than any other convict. 

Porter had already been night clerk at the hospital 
for a year and a half. He saw the broken bodies 
brought up from the basement when men were all 



118 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

but done to death in vicious floggings, in the water 
and in the hangings. He saw the doctors work over 
these tortured wrecks, and heal them just so that 
they could be further tormented. 

And when some bitter wretch, driven desperate 
and insane, would attempt suicide in his cell. Porter 
was alwaj^s forced to accompany the prison doctor 
and aid him to revive the convict. These attempted 
suicides were almost a nightly occurrence. Often 
they succeeded. 

Comparatively easy as a place in the hospital was, 
no toil could have corroded into the heart of a man 
of Porter's temperament as did this unabating con- 
tact with misery. 

He used to come into the post-office and sit for 
hours, dumb with a bleak, aching despair. In the 
blithest moments of his success in New York, Porter 
could never shake himself free from the clawing 
shadow of the prison walls. 

Porter got me into the chaplain's office, but I 
didn't make good. I couldn't see my way clear to 
join the Sunday school. The chaplain took a violent 
grudge against me the day after my arrival. It was 
noon on a Wednesday when the minister and two 
convicts passed through the outer office into the 
chaplain's private study. One of the converts was a 
regular spittoon bully, in for horse-stealing; the 
other was a cheap vaudeville actor. He had cut his 
wife's throat. They were not in my class. 

"We're going to pray," the chaplain informed me. 

"That's all right with me," I answered. 

He scowled at me, his face white with irritation, 



WITH O. HENRY 119 

his puny voice shrilling out, "Aren't you going in to 

■3" 

prayf 

"No. Not with that crowd." 

The nigger horse-thief, the cut-throat and the min- 
ister went into the study and the chaplain stood 
while the convicts threw themselves on their knees 
and immediately began mumbling and moaning to the 
Creator. 

An hour later I was sent to the deputy warden for 
insolence and insubordination. He dismissed the 
charge. 

"You don't have to pray if you don't want to. 
That ain't what you're sent to the pen for." 

I was given a job in the post-ofRce. Billy Raidler, 
another train-robber, was chief post-office clerk. In 
this new position I had considerable liberty, I was 
near to the hospital. Bill Porter, Raidler and I 
cemented a friendship that lasted until the death, 
first of Porter, then of Raidler. 

Raidler was the most beloved man in the pen. He 
had been the terror of the Indian Territory in his out- 
law days. Yet he was slender, fair-haired, soft-voiced 
as a girl. He had an impish wit and the most oblig- 
ing nature of any man I ever met. In his last fight 
with the marshals he had lost three fingers of his 
right hand. Two bullets caught him in the neck, 
knocking his spine askew. He walked as though he 
had locomotor ataxia. 

Bill Porter was just as much the recluse in prison 
as he had been in Honduras and Mexico. He did 
not make friends readily. Between him and the 
world was an impassable barrier. No man was privi- 



120 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

leged to break down that wall which hid his hopes, 
his thoughts, his troubles. And so he liked the out- 
law prisoners better than other men. They had 
learned the fine art of indifference to the other fel- 
low's affairs. 

In the post-office, Billy Raidler, Porter and I 
passed many a happy hour. I came to see a new 
Porter, who afterward developed into O. Henry, the 
smile-maker. 

The discovery came about in a peculiar manner. 

I had started to write the memoirs of my bandit 
days. Every man in prison is writing a story. Each 
man considers his life a tragedy — an adventure of the 
most absorbing interest. I had given my book a fine 
title. Raidler was enthusiastic about it. He gloried 
in "my flow of language." 

"The Long Riders" was galloping ahead at a furl-* 
ous stride. There were chapters in it with 40,000 
words and not one climax. There were other chap- 
ters with but seven sentences and as many killings as 
there were words. 

Raidler insisted that a man be shot in every para- 
graph. It would make the book "go," he said. 
Finally I came to a halt. 

"If I have any more men killed," I said, "there'll 
be nobody left on earth." 

"I'U tell you what you do," Raidler said. "You 
ask Bill Porter about it. He's writing a story, too." 

At that moment I felt myself far the greater writer 
of the two. I had not even known that Porter hoped 
to write. He dropped in to see us in the afternoon. 

"Bill tells me you're writing a story," I said. Por- 



WITH O. HENKY 121 

ter looked at me ouickly, a dark flush staining his 
cheek. 

"No, I'm not writing, I'm just practicing," he 
said. 

"Oh, is that all?" I felt really sorry for the man 
who was destined to write the finest stories America 
ever read. 

"Well, I'm writing one. In fact, it's almost fin- 
ished. Come in and I'll read it to you." 

Porter left the room quickly. I never saw him for 
two weeks. 

A desk and a chair inside the railing of the prison 
drug store — the five wards of the hospital grouped 
around that store and in those wards from 50 to 200 
patients racked with all manner of disease. The 
quiet of the night disturbed with the groans of broken 
men, the coughs of the wasted, the frightened gasp of 
the dying. The night nurse padding from ward to 
ward and every once in a while returning to the drug 
store with the crude information — another "con" has 
croaked. Then, down the corridors the rattle of the 
wheelbarrow and the negro life termer bumping the 
"stiff" to the dead house. A desk and a chair settled 
in the raw heart of chill depression! 

There at that desk, night after night, sat Bill 
Porter. And in the grisly atmosphere of prison death 
and prison brutality there bubbled up the mellow 
smile of his genius — the smile born of heartache, of 
shame, of humiliation — the smile that has sent its rip- 
ple of faith and understanding to the hearts of men 
and women everywhere. 

When it first caught Billy Raidler and me, we 



i 



122 TllllOlTGH THE SHADOAVS 

cried outright. I tliink it Avas about the proudest 
moineut in O. Henry's life. He had conic into the 
prison post-office on a Friday afternoon. It was just 
about a fortnight after I had offered to read him my 
memoirs. 

"Colonel, would you mind granting me an audi- 
ence," he said in the bantering formality of his way. 
"I'd appreciate the opinion of a fellow-struggler. I 
have a little scrap here. I'd like to read it to you and 
Billy." 

Porter was usually so reticent, usually the listener 
while others talked, that one felt a warm surge of 
pleasure whenever he showed a disposition for con- 
fidence. Billy and I swerved about, eager for the 
reading. 

Porter sat on a high stool near the desk and care- 
fully drew from his pocket a roll of brown paper. 
He had written in a big, generous hand and there was 
scarcely a scratch or an erasure on a single sheet. 

From the moment that Porter's rich, low, hesitant 
voice began there was a breathless suspense until 
suddenly Billy Raidler gulped, and Porter looked up 
as one aroused from a dream. Raidler grinned and 
Tabbed his maimed hand into his eve. 

"Damn you. Porter, I never did it in mj" life be- 
fore. By God, I didn't know what a tear looked 
like." 

It was a funny thing to see two trahi-robbers blub- 
bering over the simple story. 

Perhaps the convict is over-sentimental, but the 
queer twist in Porter's story just seemed to sneak into 
the heart with a kind of overflowing warmth. 



c-> 



p 



WITH O. HENRY 123 

It was "The Christmas Chaparral" he read to lis. 
Both Billy and I could understand the feelings of the 
cowpuncher who had lost out in the wooing of the 
girl. We could feel his hot jealousy toward the 
peeler who won the bride. We knew that he would 
keep his promise — we knew he would return to kill 
his rival. 

And when he comes back on Christmas Eve, 
dressed as a Santa Claus, armed to bring tragedy to 
the happy ranch house, we could sympathize with 
his mood. He overhears the wife say a word in his 
defense — he hears her praise the early kindness of 
his life. He walks up to her — "There's a Christmas 
present in the next room for you," he says, and leaves 
the house without firing the shot that was to have 
ended the husband's life. 

Well, the story is told as only O. Henry can rough 
in the picture. Billy and I could see ourselves in 
the cowpuncher's place. We could feel ourselves 
respond to that stray beam of kindness in the girl's 
thoughtless praise. We could feel it and it brought 
the tears to our calloused old cheeks. 

Porter sat there silent, pleased, his eyes aglow 
with happy satisfaction. He rolled up the manu- 
script and climbed down from the stool. 

"Gentlemen, many thanks. I never expected to 
win tears from experts of your profession," he said at 
last. And then we all fell into a speculation as to 
what the story should bring and where we ought to 
send it. We felt an interest in its fate. "The Long 
Riders" and its many buckets of blood were forgot- 
ten in the wizardry of "The Christmas Chaparral." 



124 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

With the fervor of hero-worshipers, Raidler and I 
acknowledged Bill Porter, the genius. 

We decided to send the story to the Black Cat. 
There was in the prison at this time a cultured 
Frenchman, a banker from New Orleans. Through 
his sister. Porter's stories, bearing the New Orleans 
address, were sent to the editor. 

When "The Christmas Chaparral" was sent out, 
Billy and I could hardly wait for the weeks to go by. 
We were sure it would be accepted at once. At least 
$75 was the price we thought it ought to bring. It 
came back. 

Years later I peddled my own story from editor 
to editor. Never did I feel the angry spasm of dis- 
appointment that seized me when Porter's great story 
was rejected. 

I knew that he, too, was filled with a bitter regret. 
He had counted on the money. He wanted to send 
a little present to his daughter, Margaret. Now she 
would have to wait. It cut him to the quick, this 
failure of his, as a father. 

But he said very little when Billy handed him the 
package. We were so incensed against the publishers, 
of the magazines, we wanted him to blacklist them 
in the future. 

"Colonel, the day may come when I can decline 
publication — at present I don't seem to have the 
deciding voice." 

And he went back to his desk and wrote and wrote. 
He went back to the melancholy prison hospital, to 
the night patrol through the cell ranges, gathering 
his material, transmuting the gloom through the 



WITH O. HENRY 125 

O. Henry alchemy into the sunny gold of his stories. 
Many of these he read to us in the stolen happiness 
of Sunday afternoons at the "Recluse Club." 




CHAPTER XVII. 

O. Henry; bohemian; the Recluse Club in the prison; the vanishing 

kitchen; the tragedy of Big Joe; effect on O. Henry; 

personality of a genius. 

Porter was a bohemian in heart, in soul, in tem- 
perament. Not the poser — ^he had neither sympathy 
nor kinship with the temperamental quacks of the 
artistic world — but a born original. He loved free- 
dom and unconventional sociability. In this buoy- 
ant atmosphere he could warm up, whisper out his 
drolleries, forget. Even in the prison the whimsical 
vagabond in him asserted itself. He founded the 
"Recluse Club." 

Six convicts three of them bank-robbers, one a 
forger and two train-robbers, made up its member- 
ship. We met on Sunday in the construction office. 
And never a club in the highest strata of society had 
graver, brighter, happier discussion — never an epi- 
cure's retreat served a more delicious menu than our 
Sunday repasts. 

The embezzlers had been men of great wealth. 
They were educated and polished. It was a fitting 
environment to bring out the best in Bill Porter. 
He was king of that exclusive club. 

It was a Sunday, three weeks after I had been 
transferred to the post-office, that I was invited to 
join. 



WITH O. HENRY 127 

"Slither over, colonel," Porter whispered to me.' 
"Ikey will show you the way." 

An odder initiation ceremony never was held. 

Porter met me at the door of the construction office 
and with elaborate burlesque paid tribute to my ac- 
complishments. "Here is a financier worthy to sit 
with the elect. The colonel kills with a deft equanim- 
ity equaled only by the finesse of Louisa in seasoning 
the gravy." 

Louisa was the nickname given to the French 
gentleman sent to the Ohio penitentiary on a charge 
of embezzlement. He was dapper, swarthy, mannered 
hke a prince — the chief clerk in the construction 
office and the man responsible for the magic kitch- 
enette concealed behind the walls of the office. 

Louisa was official chef of the "Recluse Club." He 
turned out mince pies and roast beef that would have 
made the eyes of Dives bulge with envy. He meas- 
ured to the grain all his ingredients and he followed 
minutely the instructions in a big cook book. 

If the prison had suddenly been changed into para- 
dise it would have seemed no more miraculous than 
the scene in this improvised banquet room. A fairy 
table, decorated with wild flowers and set for six, was 
laden with all manner of delicacies — olives, radishes, 
sugar, cream, white bread, lettuce, tomatoes. 

In an armchair sat the little, rotund banker from 
New Orleans — the one who had accosted me the day 
I transferred myself to the cell in Bankers' Row. He 
was such a sputtery, rasp-voiced, punctilious trifle, 
Porter could not abide him. Billy Raidler was also 
sitting in comfortable grandeur. These two were 



128 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

exempt from labor — Billy because he could not walk 
alone ; Carnot because he was old and fussy as a fat, 
spoiled baby. 

Ikey slippered from wall to wall, his ear tuned for 
the sound of the guard's approach. The club and its 
opulent layout was distinctly against prison rules. 
At a moment's signal, gas stove and its range could 
be hidden out of sight. Louisa was an architect and 
draughtsman. 

A false wall had been built and the kitchenette 
with full equipment was hidden like a long telephone 
booth behind it. It was stocked with silverware, 
napkins, flavoring extracts, flour and every necessity, 
enough in fact, for a small hotel. All had been stolen 
or bargained from the head clerks in other shops and 
from the chief cook in the kitchen. 

Louisa dodged from behind the door, a great dish 
cloth tied about his waist. 

"Dinner is served, gentlemen. Make yourselves at 
home." 

It was Bill Porter's turn to wait on table. Bill in 
all his buoyant sunniness brought on the roast beef 
that gala Sunday. It seemed to give him a whimsical 
satisfaction to wait on Raidler and me. 

"Colonel, I feel more at home holding the tray for 
you than I would have felt holding the horses that 
day," he whispered in my ear. 

Louisa, the chef, carved. I'll remember to my last 
breath the menu. It was the first good meal I had 
had since I was thrown into jail to await trial three 
years before. 

We had a tomato soup that was the pride of 




O. HENRY AT ONE OF HIS FAVORITE PASTIMES 



WITH O. HENRY 129 

Louisa's art. He boasted of the pinch of soda added 
to keep the milk from curdhng. And there was corn 
and green peas and roast potatoes, a mince pie and a 
cold bread pudding made with raisins and currants. 

I've given that recipe of Louisa's to every woman 
I ever met. Not one of them could turn out the 
delicacy as the chef of the "Recluse Club" did it. 

Porter had drafted the rules of the club. A copy 
lay at each place with the little cartoons he made of 
us. Funny little verses were scrawled under the fig- 
ures. Every Sunday we had different place cards. 

Porter's raillery was boundless. Raidler and I 
were the only ones to acknowledge ourselves guilty. 
Louisa, Porter, Ikey and old Carnot were all victims 
of circumstances. They were touchy about their 
pasts. And so the cartoonist drew them as cherubs, 
friars, lilies without stain and the dewdrops glisten- 
ing on their white sheafs. 

Not one of those men, and they were Porter's equals 
at least in social position, dared to take liberties with 
him. I think they held him in a sort of awe. His 
dignity was invulnerable. Old Carnot would have 
liked the same respect. He never got it. Billy 
Raidler never tired of puncturing his pompous self- 
esteem. But Billy would have died rather than 
wound Bill Porter. 

Old Carnot did not want any one even to mention 
the fact that he was in the penitentiary. He would 
bluster and sputter when any one spoke of him as a 
convict. Every Sunday there was an argument about 
it. Raidler, just for the impish love of teasing the 
old man, would open it. 



130 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Now, Mr. Carnot," he would say, "my esteemed 
friend, Bill Porter, and I propose to found a union 
of ex-convicts as soon as we are discharged. We wish 
you to join." 

Carnot would get red, champ his teeth together 
and rustle in his chair. 

"Don't speak of it. I don't wish you to mention 
it." His pursy lips sent out a shower, I ducked, 

"Colonel, I don't know why you are contorting 
your face and capering about so," the old man turned 
on me. 

"Well, by God, your honor, I don't want to get 
drowned." 

Then it would begin all over again, Carnot pro- 
testing that any man who would salute him as an ex- 
convict would be shot on the spot. No man dreaded 
the thought of that stigma more than Porter. We 
had many talks about it. He hid his feeling under 
a light banter. 

Once in a while the veneer cracked. The day I told 
him about the ugly tragedy of Big Joe, a Creek In- 
dian of the "Buck Gang," I thought he was going 
to faint. His face was usually quiet and enigmatic 
in its expression. This day it got ashen and rigid. 
He said nothing for a moment. Then with a flash 
he turned the subject. Old Carnot would not have 
it. There was almost an open breach between them. 

Big Joe had been sick at the hospital for months. 
One night the word went around that he had croaked. 
A burglar friend of mine, on patrol duty at the hos- 
pital, came over to the post-office. 

"Jennings, come along over to the ward with me. 



WITH O. HENRY 131 

I want to show you something," he said mysteriously. 

"What's up?" 

"They've got Big Joe tied up ready for the wheel- 
barrow and he isn't dead." 

"Hell, no!" 

"Come over and see." 

I went in with him. Big Joe was lying in his cot, 
his feet tied together, a handkerchief over his eyes. 

"Look, the burglar whispered. He took out his 
penknife and pricked the Indian on the foot. The 
knee drew up, the man twitched to his neck. It made 
me sick with repulsion. I went over to Porter. 

"Big Joe isn't dead," I said. "Tell the croaker." 

"The damn' hellions know it," Porter hissed. "I 
told him. They'd Hke to bury us all alive. Damn 
them, I'll get them yet." 

He turned his back and rushed off. I went back to 
the cot where the Indian's body lay. 

Porter came back with the night doctor. Big Joe 
had already opened his eyes. As the croaker took up 
his wrist to feel his pulse he yanked himself suddenly 
to one side. 

"Drink — water!" The broken mumble seemed to 
splinter the air. The four of us stepped back with 
the shock of this whisper from the lips of the man 
tied up as dead. 

The doctor himself pulled off the straps. The 
burglar ran for the water. I went back to the post- 
office. 

The next night Big Joe had another fit. 

"He's dead this time." The croaker was still shaky 
from his recent experience. "Let him stay dead. I 



132 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

don't want any of you damn' meddlers to monkey 
with him." 

The gigantic body, yellow and emaciated, was 
carted to the dead house and laid in the bottom of the 
trough. This trough stood on the cement floor and 
was about three feet deep. The stiff was placed on 
it and cracked ice scattered over it. The body was 
kept a day. If no friends called for it the doctors 
held a dissecting symposium — what was left of the 
bones was dumped into a rough board box and stuck 
into a hole in the prison graveyard. 

It was a Saturday night when Big Joe kicked off. 
The night porter used to go whistling by the post- 
ofSce, jogging the wheelbarrow to the dead house. 
He would stop for a word with Billy and me. We 
would look out. Sometimes there would be one stiff 
with its arms and legs dangling over the sides of the 
cart. Sometimes there were two or even three. 

"Big Joe done got it foh shuah dis time," he sang 
out to us, and clattered blithely on. 

There was something callous and appalling about 
the prison attitude to the stiffs. The men were 
treated as so much refuse — they got no more respect 
than a dead dog. Big Joe's "comeback" had given 
me an o^d twist. I felt spooky, bitter, depressed. 

I went over to the dead house on Sunday morning. 
Curiosity drew me. It was just a dark shack, 'way 
off near the gas house. The patrol guard went with 
me. We pushed the door to. 

The horror of the thing struck upon us. It was 
revolting as thought a cold clammy hand reached up 
from that trough and smeared us with blood. A kind 



WITH O. HENRY 133 

of strangling sensation caught me. The guard hung 
to my waist, his teeth chattering. Big Joe had been 
placed in the bottom of the trough. He had "come 
to" again. 

He had awakened in the dead house in the middle of 
the night. He had tried to climb out. His clawing, 
terrible, long arms were flung forward. His body 
hung over the board, his head resting on the cement, 
as though he had lost his balance and half toppled 
out. The face, one cheek pressed against the ground, 
was twisted toward us — the mouth agape, the eyes 
staring. 

I went over to the club shortly after 12. Louisa and 
Porter were in the little box kitchen. Louisa had his 
dishrag apron tied about him. Porter, inmaculate 
in the prison gray, was wearing a rich blue necktie. 

The clerk in the State shop used to make us pres- 
ents in return for favors. We wore the finest grade 
of underwear; we had good white shirts. Except for 
the black stripe on the trousers we could look like 
"dandies" on occasions. It was always an occasion 
for Porter. Even in his blackest moods — and he had 
many of them in prison — ^he was fastidious about his 
appearance. 

Louisa and Porter were scrapping like a couple of 
old women over the roast. Porter was a bit of an 
epicure, and there was many a heated argument over 
culinary niceties. 

"Here, taste it, then," the chef jabbed the spoon 
between Porter's teeth. 

"A little more celery salt," Porter smacked his 
tongue against the roof of his mouth, paused a mo- 



134 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

ment after the manner of the queen's taster, and gave 
his opinion. 

"Now here, I measured it three times." Louisa 
produced the cook book to prove it. 

"That is no proof. You should have an apothe- 
cary's scale and weigh the ingredients," Porter was 
in one of his bubbling, irrepressible moods. "Let 
the colonel judge between us." He turned to me, 
and stopped, with the spoon clanking to the floor. 
"By God, Al, what ails you?" 

I said nothing for a moment. We were seated 
about the table. They pressed me. I told them about 
Big Joe. I couldn't seem to keep it to myself. Por- 
ter jumped up and slammed his chair against the 
wall. Old Carnot commenced to sputter. 

"We should write to the President of the United 
States about it." Carnot would never stoop to any 
lesser authority. "It is an outrage." 

Porter came back to the table, the explosive, un- 
usual outburst over. He drew in his lip and coughed 
' — a habit of his. 

"I think the summer will be quite warm," he 
offered. 

Carnot would not have it. 

"Mr. Porter, yon should exercise your best ability 
as a writer on this subject. You should enkindle the 
world about it. You should put it in an article and 
send it broadcast." 

Porter's cold look would have chilled the ardor of 
any other suggestion-giver. 

"I do not understand you, sir," he answered frig- 
idly. "I am not here as a reporter. I shall not take 



WITH O. HENRY 135 

upon myself the burden of responsibility. This 
prison and its shame is nothing to me." 

He got up and walked into the kitchen. I fol- 
lowed him. "There are some obnoxious people here." 
His voice was stifled with resentment. "We should 
eliminate them." 

It was one of the few times that I ever saw Bill 
Porter openly ruffled. He despised tips from men of 
Carnot's caliber. He never wanted any one to point 
out a story to him. He had to see the thing himself. 
As he says in "The Duplicity of Hargreaves" — "All 
life belongs to me. I take thereof what I want. I 
return it as I can." 

With Billy Raidler and me it was quite different. 
Porter liked us. He would sit in the post-office and 
deliberately draw out from us accounts of the outlaw 
days. He would get us to describe the train-robbers, 
he would deftly prod us into giving elaborate details 
even to the very slang expressions the men had used 
in their talk. I never saw him take a note, but his 
memory was relentless. 

The day I told him about Dick Price, a fellow-con- 
vict, he sat quiet for a long time. 

"That will make a wonderful story," he said at 
last. 

Dick Price is the original of the immortal Jimmy 
Valentine. 

Porter came into the post-office just after the as- 
tounding feat had been accomplished. Dick Price, 
the warden, and I had returned from the offices of 
the Press-Post Publishing Company, Price had 
opened the safe in 10 seconds. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Story of convict Dick Price; grief for his mother; her visit to the prison; 
the safe-opening; promise of pardon. 

Porter gives Dick the chance in the story that he 
never had in Hfe. The history of the real Jimmy Val- 
entine, shadowed, embittered, done to death in the 
stir, was just another of the tragedies that ripped 
through the film and showed Bill Porter the raw, cruel 
soul of the "upper crust." 

Dick Price had been in prison ever since he was a 
little fellow of 11. There were a few wretched years 
in the outer world. It was not freedom. 

Bill Porter took but one incident out of that tragic 
life for his story, "A Retrieved Reformation." His 
Jimmy Valentine is a rather debonair crook — but in 
the moment when he throws off his coat, picks up his 
tools and starts to open the safe, in that moment there 
is crowded the struggle and the sacrifice of a lifetime. 
It goes to the heart, quick and piercing, when Jimmy's 
chance of happiness seems lost; it sends the breath 
into the throat with a quiver of joy when he wins out 
in the end. Porter has touched the strings so deftly 
because the whole shadow of Dick Price's broken life 
hovers in the background of the story. 

Dick was what convicts call a "stir bug." He had 
been in the pen so long he had become morose, sour, 
a brooding sort. But he was as square a man as Christ 



WITH O. HENRY 137 

ever put on the earth. Dick was the fellow that tried 
to save me from the beating and the contract after my 
attempt to escape. I had done him a little favor and 
he was ready to have his flesh torn to ribbons in grati- 
tude. 

He was in under the "habitual criminal act.'* In 
Ohio a man caught at his third offense is given a life 
sentence in the penitentiary and denied all privileges. 
Only the man that has been half blinded in solitary, 
that has been cooped in wretched cells and denied the 
right to read or write — only the fellow that has had 
the spirit beaten down in him by the agonized screams 
of tortured men, can know what Dick Price's sen- 
tence meant. 

He was about 20 when he was thrown into prison 
on his third offense. And because it was the third he 
was robbed of all human comforts. He couldn't have 
a book or a paper. He wasn't allowed to write a let- 
ter; he wasn't even allowed to receive one. And if 
there was a kind, anxious soul in the outer world 
eager to hear from him, to see him, it made no differ- 
ence. For 16 years not one stray word, not one bit 
of cheer had come to him from the world. 

I never saw anything so terrible as the way that 
fellow's heart was breaking. He had an eternal han- 
kering to hear from his old mother. It whipped him 
ceaselessly. He wanted to know if she was alive, if 
she had to work as hard as before, if she thought of 
him. He had a passion to get a word from her that 
was driving him mad. 

I got the word for him. And he was ready to die 
for me in his gratitude. Because of that word he 



138 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

opened the safe of the Press-Post Pubhshing Com- 
pany. 

I met Dick first walking about the cell ranges at 
night. It was just a few months after I arrived. I 
was in the transfer office and was about the last man 
to be locked up. Dick had been there so long the 
deputies trusted him and gave him passes to leave his 
cell and wander about the corridors. I used to see his 
small, nervous figure pacing back and forth. He had 
a keen, dark face and a restless gray eye. One night 
I came upon him sitting in a corner, eating a piece of 
pie. 

"Have a slice, pardner?" he called to me. The 
other men shunned Dick a bit because he was moody 
and nerve-racked — because, too, he had a sharp, 
almost brilliant mind, much superior to the average 
convict. 

I accepted, and it was then that he told me of his 
longing for news of his mother. "I tell you it's hell, 
to think the way she's made to suffer. I'll bet you 
she stands outside these infernal walls at night — I'll 
bet she'd tear her heart out to hear from me. You 
know — " 

Dick swung into his story. Men in prison hunger 
for conversation. They will tell their histories to any 
one who will Hsten to them. 

Little Dick was a gutter snipe, he said. His father 
was a Union soldier He died of delirium tremens 
when Dick was a few years old. After that the kid 
just belonged down in the alley with the tin cans. 
His mother took in washing. She tried to give the 
boy enough to eat. She sent him to school. Some- 



WITH O. HENRY 189 

times there was soup and bread for dinner ; sometimes 
Dick took his meals out of the rubbish piles. 

And one day the poor, ravenous little ragpicker 
broke into a box car and stole a 10-cent box of 
crackers. 

"And they sent me to hell for the rest of my life 
Tor that," a look of bitterness lashed like a dark wave 
over his face. "I might have put these to good use 
if I'd had a chance." He looked down at his hands. 
They were the strongest, most perfectly shaped hands 
I have ever seen. The fingers were long and tapered, 
muscular yet delicate. "They said my mother didn't 
take care of me. They sent me to the Mansfield 
reformatory and they turned me out a master me- 
chanic at 18." 

His graduation papers were of no value. A man 
named E. B. Lahman controlled all the bolt works 
in the Ohio penitentiary. Convicts loathed him, and 
because he knew the danger of employing any upon 
their discharge, he made it a rule that no ex-fconvict 
would be given work in his shops. Dick Price had a 
job there. Somebody found that he had been dragged 
up in a reform school. He was fired. 

He couldn't get a job. His mechanical training 
made him adept at safe-manipulating. He cracked 
one, took a few hundred dollars, got a jolt for it. 

It was the same story again when he was released. 
No one would give him a job. He could starve or 
steal. He cracked another safe, got caught and was 
given life. 

"You know, the old woman came to the court," 
he told me. "And, gee, I can hear it yet, the way she 



140 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

bawled when they took me away. It's just awful. 
You know, Jennings, if you could write to her, I'd 
die for you." 

I managed to get a note smuggled out to her. The 
most pitiful broken, little mispelled scrawl I ever 
saw came back. 

And when that bent, heart-broken old mother 
stumbled across the guardroom floor and stood with 
her feeble hands shaking the wicket, I'd like to have 
died. I couldn't speak. Neither could she. 

She just stood there with the tears running down 
her rough cheeks and her poor chin trembling. 

Dick's mother had a faded red shawl wrapped 
about her head. She was twisted and bent. A bit 
of gray hair, coarse and curlj^, fell over her ear. She 
had fixed herself up, thinking she might catch a 
glimpse of her boy: 

"And they won't let his old mother see the lad, my 
poor little Dick — the poor child!" The sobs caught 
in her throat. She pressed her face against the 
wicket, her gnarled wasted hands shaking the iron 
bars. 

The poor old creature was just crazy for a sight of 
her son. Dick was not 100 yards away. They 
wouldn't let these two have that scrap of joy. Not 
in four million years could the law understand the 
agony it had wrought. 

"But I thought I might catch the look of him, by 
chance, maybe." She looked up at me with a pitiful 
hope in her dim eyes. It hurt the heart to wound 
the poor creature. I had to tell her that Dick could 
not come, that I had sent for her, that I would tell 



WITH O. HENRY 141 

Dick anything she wanted to say, that she must not 
let the guards know who she was. 

"Dick is the foreman of the machine shop and the 
smartest man in the prison," I told her. A prideful 
smile came like a sunbeam into her eye. 

"Sure, I know it, that pert he was a baby." She 
began to grope into the pocket of her skirt and 
brought out an envelope tied in red ribbon. Care- 
fully wrapped in brown paper were a couple of pic- 
tures. One was of a big-eyed, laughing youngster 
of four or five. 

"A prettier bairn never drew breath. 'Tis happy 
we were in that time. 'Twas before the drink got the 
better of poor John." 

The other picture was of Dick just before he had 
been arrested the last time. He was a boy of 19. 
The face was sensitive, clean-looking, determined. 

"He doesn't look chipper like that now," she looked 
at me hoping I would contradict her fears. "'Twas 
the gay tongue that he had and the laugh always in 
his heart. Such a tale as he would be telling me of 
the good home he would buy. The poor child, does 
it go very hard on him in here, he was that fond of a 
cheery place?" 

Fifty questions she asked me. Every answer was 
a lie. The truth would have killed her as it was 
ending Dick. 

I told her Dick was happy. I told her he was 
well. I said he might get a pardon. It was all I 
could do to talk. I knew that Dick was doomed. 
He was actually wasted with tuberculosis. But the 



142 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

promises seemed to give her comfort. She stood 
silent a moment. 

"Will you be after telling him his old mother's 
prayers are with him? And just let on to him that 
I come down by the walls every blessed night to 
be that near to him." 

Poor Dick, he was waiting in the range for me 
that night. He never said a word. He just looked 
at me. I told him everything she had said. I told 
him how pretty, hke a grandmother, she looked. I 
said that she came down to the prison at night to 
pray for him. He didn't speak. He walked off. 
Four times he came back and tried to thank me. 
At last he sat down, covered his face with his hands 
and burst out crying. 

It was only a few months later that I was caught 
trying to escape. Dick Price tried to take the pun- 
ishment in my stead. He went to the deputy and 
swore he had given me the saws. It was a guard 
who had done it. If I had snitched on him he would 
have got ten years. 

The deputy knew that Dick had lied. I told him 
that he did it in gratitude — that I had got a letter 
to his mother and he wanted to save me from the 
contract. 

So I cleared him of the charge, but he was re- 
duced to the fourth grade and compelled to fall in 
with the lockstep. It was going pretty hard with 
him. His work in the shop was exacting. Some- 
times he would get a fit of coughing that left him 
weak for an hour. 

When I was transferred to the post-office, I used 



WITH O. HENRY 143 

to go over and visit Dick. I had money then, too, 
and we used to swap pies and doughnuts. Dick 
would talk about the reform school. The things he 
told were appalling. They made me bitter with 
hatred. Little fellows of 11 or 12 were just put 
through a training school for hell. 

Several times I tried to get another letter to the 
old woman. Something always happened. 

After I had been appointed private secretary to 
the warden, it looked as though Dick's chance had 
come. He performed a service of great value to 
the State. He saved the papers of the Press-Post 
Publishing Company. The Governor promised him 
a pardon. 

The Press-Post Publishing Company had been 
placed in the hands of a receiver. Wholesale charges 
of thievery were bandied about. The stockholders 
had been robbed. They blamed the directors, the 
directors put it up to the treasurer. They secured 
a warrant for his arrest. He locked the safe and 
fled. 

Columbus was agog over the scandal. Some of 
the biggest men in the city were implicated. The 
court had to get the papers out of the safe. It oc- 
curred to somebody in authority that there might 
be a cracksman in the pen who could help them 
out of the difficulty. The warden was very eager 
to accommodate them. 

"Is there any fellow here who can do it?" he asked 
me. Warden Darby was a prince. He had im- 
proved prison conditions. The men all liked him. 

"There are perhaps forty here who can do it. I 



144 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

can do it myself. A little nitroglycerine turns any 
combination." 

"They can't take the risk of dynamite. They want 
the papers recovered intact." 

I thought of Dick Price. He had told me of the 
method of safe-cracking which he had originated. He 
could open any combination on earth in from ten 
to fifteen seconds with his bare hands. A dozen times 
he had told me of the feat. 

"See, I filed my nails to the quick," he said, "cross- 
wise through the middle, until I filed them down to 
the nerve. It made them sensitive. I could feel the 
slightest jar. I held those fingers over the dial. I 
turned the combination with my right hand. The 
quiver of the tumbler passing its mark strides through 
the nerves. I would stop, turn backward. It never 
failed." 

I wondered if Dick would do the trick now for 
the State. "Could you get a pardon for him?" I 
asked the warden. Dick was really dying with his 
cough. 

"If he'll do it, I'll move heaven and earth to win 
it." 

I went to Dick. I told him he might get a pardon. 
His thin face flushed. 

"She'd be glad. Hell, Al, I'd do anything for 
you." 

The warden got a closed carriage. Early that 
afternoon the three of us went to the office of the 
Press-Post Publishing Company. Dick wanted me 
with him. 

We scarcely spoke. There was a strained, nervous 



WITH O. HENRY 145 

hush over us. The warden fidgeted, ht a cigar, and 
let it go out without taking a puff. He was worried. 
So was I. I was afraid Dick couldn't make good. 
I figured that he probably had lost his art through 
disuse. Then it occurred to me that he might have 
exaggerated. Sixteen years in prison knocks the 
props from a man's brain often enough. 

The warden had wired Governor George K. Nash 
of Ohio. He promised the pardon if the safe was 
opened. What a sore humiliation to Warden Darby 
if Dick failed! 

Not a word had been said, but Dick looked up 
with that young, magnetic smile of his. "Don't 
Worry, Al," he grinned. "I'll rip hell out of it if 
it's made of cast iron and cement." His confidence 
made us feel easier. 

"Give me the file." Dick had cautioned me to 
get him a small, rat-tailed file and to make sure that 
the edges were keen. I handed it to him. He scru- 
tinized it as though he were a diamond-buyer look- 
ing for a yellow speck in a gem. Then he started 
to work. The warden and I shuddered. 

Half way down the nail across the middle he drew 
the file. His nails were deep and beautifully shaped. 
Back and forth he filed until the lower half of the 
nail was separated from the upper by a thin red 
mark. He filed to the quick. Soon only the lower 
half of the nail remained. 

Light and deft, his sensitive hand worked. I 
watched his face. It didn't even twitch. He was 
completely absorbed in the process and seemed to 
have forgotten the warden and me. Once or twice 



146 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

he champed his teeth and his breath came a bit short. 
The fingers bled a httle. He took out his handker- 
chief and dabbed them clean. Then he sat back. He 
was finished. 

I took his hand and looked at it. It was a neat 
job, but cruel. The index, middle and third fingers 
of his left hand looked as though the nails had been 
pared half off and the quick bruised and sand- 
papered. 

Dick was so tense with suppressed excitement that 
he bolted out of the carriage as soon as it stopped 
and walked so quickly the warden and I had to run 
to keep pace with him. When we reached the office 
about a dozen men were waiting. 

"Is this a show, Al?" Dick snapped the words 
out. He was full of impatience. We stood around 
about ten minutes. Dick looked at me angrily. I 
was beset with alarm anyway. I took his look to 
mean that his fingers wouldn't respond if we didn't 
hurry. I ran over to the warden, bumping against 
two gossipy, stupid looking officials. 

"Hurry up or the job is up." His face took on 
the scaredest, grayest shadow I ever saw. Dick put 
his hand to his mouth and laughed. I whispered to 
the warden that the men would have to remain out- 
side. Only two State representatives, the warden, 
Dick and I went into the room where the safe was 
kept. 

"That's it," one of the men said. 

Dick went over to it. There wasn't a breath of 
hesitation in his answer. 

"Take the time, Al." There was a chuckle of 



WITH O. HENRY 147 

triumph in the challenge. His thin face was quiet 
as a statue's. The cheekbones were smudged with 
red and his eyes unnaturally brilliant. 

He kneeled before the safe, put his bruised fingers 
across the dial, waited a moment, and then turned 
the combination. I watched every quiver of his 
strong, delicate hands. There was the slightest pause, 
his right hand went backward. He turned the dial 
again, pulled the knob gently toward him. The safe 
was opened! 

The miracle seemed to strike everyone dumb. The 
room was stiller than silence. It was spellbound. 
The State officials stood as though riven. I looked 
at my watch. It was just twelve seconds since Dick 
had begun. 

He got up and walked off. The warden sprang 
toward him. The tears were crowding into Darby's 
eyes. His face was flushed with pride. He put his 
arm on Dick's shoulder. 

"That was fine, lad. God bless you!" 

Dick nodded. He was an indifferent sort. 

On the ride back to the pen the warden leaned 
over and put his hand on Dick's. "You're the noblest 
fellow God ever made," he said. "If they gave me 
the deal you got, hell itself wouldn't have made me 
do it." 

Dick shrugged his shoulders and started to speak. 
His lip trembled. He looked out of the carriage 
window, watching the people and the houses. He 
couldn't keep his glance from the streets. He was 
leaning forward as though fascinated. 

"Look at that, look at that!" He caught me 



148 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

quickly and pointed to a little boy of ten or so carry- 
ing a rollicking youngster of three or four. I saw 
nothing unusual in the spectacle. Dick sank back 
as though a vision had passed. 

"That's the first kid I've seen in sixteen years." 
He didn't look out again. We said nothing further 
during the drive back to the prison. 

The next morning every newspaper in Columbus 
was full of the sensational story. The warden had 
given his word to Dick that the process would not 
be revealed. Not even the two men who had watched 
knew how the feat was accomplished. To them it 
seemed as witchcraft. All sorts of explanations were 
given. 

A prisoner in the Ohio Penitentiary, serving a life 
term — a prisoner who had been sent up as a boy 
and who was now dying had opened the safe, with 
a steel wire, one daily said. Another paper said he 
used a paper-cutter. They were all mystified. Only 
one spoke of the pardon promised the convict. I went 
to the warden about it. 

"Dick's cough is pretty bad. They ought to hurry 
it up." 

"They will hurry," Darby promised. I know he 
meant what he said. I brought the word to Dick. 
He was back at the machine shop. 

"I don't care," he said, in a fit of morose indiffer- 
ence. "I don't believe them. I did it for you, Al." 
He looked up quickly. "I wonder if the old woman 
saw the paper. I'd like her to know I did it. It 
would give her a sniff over the neighbors. Could 



WITH O. HENRY 149 

you get her to know?" He walked to his cell and 
turned. 

"Al," he said, "don't worry about me. I know 
I'll never get the pardon. I'm about done in, any- 
how." 



CHAPTER XIX 

Interest of O. Henry; Price the original of Jimmy Valentine; the pardon 
denied ; death of the cracksman ; the mother at the prison gate. 

When the cell door closed on Dick I stood watching 
the range, hoping he would come out again. In prison 
men grow superstitious. I wondered if his bitter con- 
viction that the pardon would never be granted was 
a premonition. I went back to the office — the chill 
breath of fear putting down the ardent hope the 
warden's promise had raised. 

Every man in the pen knew what Dick had done. 
They talked about it, advancing the most fantastic 
theories as to Dick's method. 

Bill Porter came over to the warden's office that 
night. His visits were always welcome. There was 
in Bill's warm, quiet humor, a sunny cheer, an up- 
lifting happiness that seemed to catch one by the neck 
of the spirit and shake him free from the harassing 
pettiness of prison life. 

When Billy Raidler and I could not rouse each 
other, we kept our ears tuned for Bill's voice at the 
door. He would come in, sniff the moodiness in the 
air and breeze it away with a dash of his buoyant 
gaiety. 

Bill's humor was not the offspark of happiness, but 
of the truth as he saw it. He was not an incorrigible 
optimist. There were times when silent gloom hov- 



WITH O. HENRY 151 

ered like a black wraith about him. But he had an 
abiding faith in the worth of life and a sane, poised 
viewpoint that all the cruel injustice of his prison 
sentence could not distort. 

Bill accepted life on its own terms. There was in 
him none of the futile cowardice that quarrels with the 
bargain of existence; mocks and sneers and exhausts 
itself in self-pity. To him life was but a colossal 
experiment marked by millions of inevitable failures, 
but destined, none the less, for an ultimate triumph. 

His heart was crushed in prison, but his mind did 
not lose its clear, unbiased insight. He would send 
out a word, a phrase that seemed to puncture through 
the film of our dissatisfaction. The grotesque world, 
fabricated of depression, set itself aright and we were 
compelled to laugh and agree with Bill's droll hon- 
esty. 

"Colonel, I surmise you were Pandora's imp when 
the Post's box of troubles was opened?" He handed 
me an account he had just read in one of the evening 
papers. It was the first time I had ever seen him 
manifest the slightest curiosity. 

I told him about Dick. He wanted to know ex- 
actly how the safe had been opened. The thought 
of a man filing his nails to the quick and then filing 
until the nerves were exposed bothered him. He 
had a dozen questions to ask. 

"I should think he could have taken an easier 
way," he said. 

"Suppose he had sandpapered the ball of his fin- 
gers? It would be less cruel, do you think it would 
be as effective? Did it seem to pain him? He must 



152 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

be a fellow of enormous grit. B-r-r-r! I couldn't 
do it even if it would open the bars of our little pri- 
vate hell here. What is Dick Price like? What 
gave him the idea in the beginning?" 

I was amazed at his gossipy quizzing. 

"Hell, man, you must be first cousin to the Spanish 
Inquisition," I rallied. "Why are you so much in- 
terested?" 

"Colonel, this is a wonderful episode," he said. "It 
will make a great story." 

I had not thought of it in such a light. Bill's 
mind was ever on the alert. It was like some wizard 
camera with the lens always in focus. Men, their 
thoughts and their doings, were snapped in its tire- 
less eye. 

All life, as he tells us in "The Duplicity of Har- 
graves," belonged to him. He took thereof what he 
pleased and returned it as he would. 

Once he had taken it, it was his. He stored it 
up in his mind. When he called upon it, it came 
forth bearing the stamp of his own originality. 

Bill took no notes. Once in a while he would jot 
a word or two down on a scrap of paper, a corner 
of a napkin, but in all of our rambles together I 
never noticed the pencil much in evidence. He pre- 
ferred to work his unfailing memory. 

It seemed to have boundless space for his multi- 
tudinous ideas. He kept them mentally pigeonholed 
and tabulated, ready to be taken out and used at a 
moment's notice. It was years before he made Dick 
Price immortal in the story of Jimmy Valentine. I 
asked him why he had not used it before. 




William Sidney Porter 
"o. henry," from a crayon drawing by iieitman 



WITH O. HENRY 153 

*'I've had it in mind, colonel, ever since you told 
me of it," he answered. "But I was afraid it would 
not go. Convicts, you know, are not accepted in the 
best society even in fiction." 

Porter had never met Dick Price. One night I 
brought them together in the warden's office. It was 
odd to note the instantaneous sympathy between these 
two unapproachable men. 

Both held aloof from the other prisoners ; Dick be- 
cause he was moody, Bill because of his reticence. 
And yet, between the two there seemed to spring up 
an immediate understanding. 

Porter had brought over a new magazine. He was 
privileged to receive as many as he liked. He handed 
it to Dick. The fellow looked up, a glance of wistful 
swiftness darting across his flushed face. 

"I've hardly seen one since I've been here," he 
said, snatching it quickly and sticking it under his 
coat. Porter did not understand. When Dick left, 
I told him what his sentence had been — that he could 
not receive a book, a visit or even a letter. 

"Colonel, do they starve a man's soul and kill his 
mind like that?" He said nothing more. He seemed 
shocked and bitter. In a moment he got up to go. 
At the door he turned. 

"Well for him that he has not much longer to 
live." 

The words sent a gust of white fury over me. I 
began to fear again. I went over to the ranges every 
night to see Dick. He was getting worse. I begged 
the warden to press his case. 

At last the day came when the Governor was to 



154 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

pass upon it. There was nothing for him to do but 
to sign it. Dick had performed his part of the bar- 
gain. The State could now pay off its obhgation. 
I told Dick. 

"You can have a nice Httle feed with the old woman 
day after tomorrow," I said. He didn't answer. He 
didn't want me to know he hoped, but in spite of 
himself his breath came hurriedly and he turned his 
back quickly. 

1 knew then that this silent, grateful fellow had 
been waiting and counting on that pardon. I knew 
that the thought of freedom and a few years of peace 
had sustained him in all the suffering of these last 
months. 

The next morning I got the word from the war- 
den. The pardon had been denied. 

When the warden gave me that word I felt as 
though a black wall had dropped suddenly before 
me, cutting off the light and the air. I felt shut-in, 
smothered, dumb. 

What would poor Dick do now? What would he 
think of me? If I had not told him it was coming 
up I might have jollied him along. But he knew. 
He would be waiting for me. All day he would be 
thinking of it. I would have to see him in the corri- 
dors that night. 

When I went into his range, there he was, pacing 
up and down the corridor. I looked at the stooped, 
emaciated form. The prison clothes hung from his 
bones as though he were a peg. His haggard face 
turned upon me a look of such pathetic eagerness 
I felt my courage sinking in a cold, speechless misery. 



WITH O. HENRY 155 

I tried to tell him. The words got caught in the 
gulp in my throat. 

The flush faded from his dark cheek until his skin 
looked the color of a gray cinder, with the over-bril- 
liant eyes glaring forth like burning coals. He un- 
derstood. He stood there staring at me like a man 
who has heard his own death sentence. And I could 
not say a word to him. After a moment, age-long 
with its dull agony, he put out his hand. 

"It's all right, Al," his voice was a choking whis- 
per. "I don't care. Hell, it doesn't make any dif- 
ference to me." 

But it did. It finished him. It broke his heart. 
He hadn't the courage to fight it out any longer. A 
month later they took him to the prison hospital. 

He was dying. There was no chance of a cure. 
I wanted to write to his old mother. But it would 
only have pained her. They wouldn't have let her 
come to him. The warden couldn't break the State's 
law. So I just went to see him every few nights. 
I sat and talked to him. As I would come up to 
his cot he would put out his hand and grin. And 
when I looked into those quick, intelligent, game 
eyes, a stab of pain went through me. He never 
spoke of his old mother now. 

At this time I was a somewhat privileged character 
in the prison. As the warden's secretary, I could 
\^isit any department at will. Otherwise Dick Price 
might have died and I would never have had even 
one chance to see him. 

When a convict went to the hospital he was cut 
off from all communication with his former fellows. 



156 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Men lay sometimes for months in their cots without 
ever a word from the only friends they had. They 
suffered and died without one touch of human sym- 
pathy. 

I was the only visitor Dick had. Men had called 
him a "stir bug" because of his erratic, moody ways — 
because, too, of his uncanny genius as a mechanic. 
As he lay there coughing his life away, he was the 
gentlest and the calmest soul in the prison. He 
viewed his suffering and his certain death as a spec- 
tator might have. The queerest, oddest fancies pos- 
sessed him. One night he turned to me with a whim- 
sical dreaminess in his voice. 

"Al, why do you suppose I was born?" he asked. 
"Would you say that I had ever lived?" 

I couldn't think of any answer to make. I knew 
that I had hved and got a lot of joy out of it. I 
wasn't sure about Dick. He didn't wait for my 
verdict. 

"Remember that book your friend Bill slipped 
me? I read every story in it. It showed me just 
how I stack up. It told me what a real life might 
mean. I'm 36 years old and I'm dying without ever 
having lived. Look at this, Al." 

He handed me a scrap of paper with a long list 
of short phrases on it. 

"Those are the things I've never done. Think of 
it, Al. I never saw the ocean, never sang, never 
danced, never went to a theatre, never saw a good 
painting, never said a real prayer 

"Al, do you know that I never talked to a girl 
in my life? Never had one of them so much as give 



WITH O. HENRY 157 

me a kind look? I'd like to figure out why I was 
bom." 

There came a week when I was so busy I did not 
go to see him. One night very late I dropped into 
the post-office to talk to Billy Raidler. Down the 
alley toward the dead house came the big negro por- 
ter, whistling and shuffling along. Billy and I used 
to look out, inquire the name of the stiff, and pay 
no further respects. We were familiar with death 
and suffering. This night the negro rapped at the 
window. 

"Massa Al, can't nebber guess who I'se got with 
me to-night?" 

"Who, Sam?" we called out. 

"Little Dick Price." 

Little Dick, thrown into the wheelbarrow, with 
nothing but an old rag over his body, his head lopped 
out at one end, his feet hung over the other. Sam 
rattled the barrow off to the dead house. 

I stayed with Billy that night. Both of us were 
fond of Dick. We couldn't sleep. Billy sat up in 
bed. 

" 'Sleep, Al?" he called. 

"Hell, no." 

"God, don't it give you the creeps to think of poor 
little Dick alone down there in that trough?" 

I went down to the dead house the next morning. 
Dick was already closed up in the rough wooden 
box. The one-horse spring wagon that carried off 
the unclaimed convict dead was waiting to take him 
to the potter's field. I was the only one who fol- 
lowed him. The wagon started off at a trot. I ran 



158 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

ahead of it to the east gate. Old Tommy, the gate- 
man, stopped me. 

"What you after, Mr. Al?" 

"I'm just coming as far as I can with a friend of 
mine," I told him. 

The gate swung to. It was a chill, foggy morn- 
ing. I looked out. Leaning against a tree was a 
poor, huddled, bent little figure, with an old red 
shawl drawn tight about the shoulders. She had her 
hands clasped tight together, her elbows dug into 
her waist, and she was swinging those hands up and 
down and shaking her head in a grief so abject, so 
desolate, it sent a broken sob even into old Tommy's 
voice. 

"Tommy, go speak to her," I said. "That's Dick's 
mother." 

"Aw, gee, ain't that hell! The poor old soul I'* 

The spring wagon rattled by. Tommy put up 
his hand to the driver. "Go slow there, ye heartless 
boob. That there is the poor lad's old mother." 

The driver reined in the horse. Dick's mother 
lurched against the wagon and looked in at) the 
wooden box. She was swaying from side to side like 
a crazy thing. 

All that she had on earth — the boy whose tragic, 
broken life had been her crucifixion — was in that 
crude box. The wagon jogged off — the trembling, 
heart-piercing old figure half running, half falhng 
along the road after it. 

Society had taken the last farthing of its debt from 
Dick Price and it had beaten his mother into the 
dust in the cruel bargain. 



CHAPTER XX. 

I 

The Prison Demon; the beast exhibited; magic of kindness; reclamation; 
tragedy of Ira Maralatt; meeting of father and daughter. 

Such is the story of Jimmy Valentine as it unfolded 
itself in the Ohio penitentiary. O. Henry takes the 
one great episode in that futile life and with it he 
wins the tears and the grateful smiles of the nation. 
In that throbbing silence, when the ex-con opens the 
safe and the little sister of the girl he loves is saved 
from suffocation, Jimmy as he might have been, not 
Jimmy as he was, is before us. Few who have breathed 
hard in that gripping moment would have denied 
Dick Price his chance, would have refused him the 
pardon he earned, would have doomed him to his for- 
lorn and lonely death in the prison hospital. 

Bill Porter was not the grim artist to paint that 
harsh picture for the world. He loved a happy ending. 
He could not even give the exact details of the safe- 
opening. It was too cruel for his light and winsome 
fancy. 

That was ever Bill's way. He took the facts, but 
he twisted them as he would. I asked him about it 
later. In the story he gives the hero a costly set of 
tools wherewith to open the vault. He does not have 
him file his nails. 

"Colonel, it chills my teeth to think of that gritting 
operation," he said. "I prefer the set of tools. I don't 



160 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

like to make my victims suffer. And then, you see, the 
tools enable Jimmy to make a present to a friend. 
That gift illustrates the toleration of the man who 
has been in prison. 

"Jimmy decided to quit the game himself, but he 
does not expect the whole world to share his fervor 
of reform. Instead of burying the instruments of 
his former profession, as your reformed citizen would 
have done, he straightway sends them to a former 
pal. I hke that spirit in my character. 

"The ordinary man who makes a New Year's reso- 
lution immediately sends down censure on the fel- 
low who isn't perched on the wagon with him. Jimmy 
does no such thing. That's one of the advantages 
of spending a few vacations in prison. You grow 
mellow in your judgments." 

This soft, golden toleration was one of the gracious 
traits in Porter's character. It won him friends even 
though his aloof dignity forbade familiarity. In the 
"pen" he was universally respected. The meanest 
cutthroat in the ranges felt honored to serve him. 

Porter's "drag" with the prison barber was the 
subject of raillery at the club. The barber was an 
artist in his trade. He seemed to take a mean de- 
light in turning out grotesque, futuristic patterns in 
headdress. But for Porter the most exquisite pre- 
cision was observed. His thin, yellow hair was 
trimmed to a nicety. The kind, easy manner of the 
man had completely captivated, the burly-hearted 
convict barber. 

If it had not been for this humorous, penetrative 
understanding in Porter, the Recluse Club would 



WITH O. HENRY 161 

not have endured a month. He was its equihbrium. 
Many a violent clash ended in a laugh because of 
an odd fling Bill Porter would interject into the 
turmoil. 

Men who have been walled off from free contact 
with their fellows become excessively quarrelsome 
and "touchy." We were cooped together like chil- 
dren in an over-large family. We had no escape 
from each other's society. 

The isolation of prison life whets antagonism. Men 
who could travel to the ends of the earth in friend- 
ship would, in a sudden raging bitterness, spring 
like tigers at each other's throat. Even in the hap- 
piness of our Sunday dinners these explosive out- 
bursts would break out among the members. 

It would start with the merest trifle, and all at 
once there would be fiercely angry taunts flung from 
one to the other. In one of these uncalled for erup- 
tions I sent in my resignation to the club. 

Billy Raidler had protested that he could taste 
the soapsuds on the dishes. I was the chief dish- 
washer. I did not like the imputation. I would not 
have minded Billy's protest, but old man Carnot 
backed him up with further criticism. 

"Most assuredly we can taste the soap," he said. 
"But worse than that, I do not like the garlic. Now, 
Mr. Jennings, why can you not pick the odious vege- 
table out of the roast?" 

Carnot was an irascible old epicure. He wanted 
his napkin folded oblong and his knife and fork laid 
down in a certain fashion. He never failed to resent 
the introduction of the garlic Louisa loved. 



162 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Every one at the table took up the issue. They 
could all taste the soapsuds, they said. "Damn' pigs, 
all of you! Take the honor at the dishpan your- 
selves." I was furious with resentment. I could 
have hurled the pots- and skillets at them. The next 
Sunday I did not go to the club. I told Billy I 
was finished with them. Billy had no patience with 
the sulks and left me in a huff. 

Porter came over to the post-office and knocked 
at the door. "Colonel," he said, and there was such 
understanding indulgence in his tone I felt imme- 
diately appeased, "don't you think you better re- 
consider?" 

"You're the very salt of the earth. The club 
is absolutely flat without your presence. You see, 
we only agreed with Billy to sustain him. He's a 
cripple. He can't stand alone," 

It was just the sort of pampering to mollify un- 
reasonable hot temper. Porter was always ready to 
smooth us down. He was always ready to hear our 
grievances. His own troubles he bore alone. 

Whenever he did reveal his thoughts it was by an 
accidental outcropping in a hghtsome talk. He and 
Louisa used to indulge in long discussions on astron- 
omy and evolution. Porter was facetious, Louisa 
serious and very scientific. Louisa would be mixing 
up a gravy or a sauce. 

"You're something of a little creator in the culi- 
nary line, Louisa," Porter would say. "What do 
you suppose were the ingredients used in the crea- 
tion of the world?" 

Louisa's attention was instant. He would talk 



WITH O. HENRY 163 

about protoplasm and the gradual accommodation of 
living organism to environment. 

"Tut, tut," Porter would mock. "I hold fast to 
the Biblical story. What else should men be made 
of but a handful of mud? The Creator was right; 
men are but dirt. Take Ira Maralatt, the Prison 
Demon, for instance." 

A queer, yellowish pallor spread over Bill's face. 
I knew that the name had slipped from Porter's lips 
unconsciously. 

"Colonel, it is a ghastly thing to see a man de- 
graded into a beast like Maralatt," he said. "Last 
night they beat him to strips again. I had to go 
down to the basement to sponge him off. I tell you 
it would take a floor mop to do the job right — ^he is 
such a giant." 

It was the first time I had ever heard Porter speak 
of Maralatt, the Prison Demon, yet he had perhaps 
to sponge him off two or three times a week. Mara- 
latt was the untamed tiger of the "stir." He was 
the prison horror. He had attacked and stabbed 
a dozen guards. 

For fourteen years he had been in solitary, prac- 
tically buried alive in the black hole in the basement 
without a bed, without blankets, without light. 

When the guards would attempt to clean out the 
cell Ira would spring at them. They would over- 
power him, beat him and hang him up by the wrists. 
Still he was unsubdued. He kept the prison in re- 
curring spasms of fright. 

No one knew who would be his next victim. He 
was as ferocious as a mad bull. 



164 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

I had never seen him. Porter's exclamation filled 
me with curiosity. I went over the next evening to 
ask him about Maralatt. We were standing in one 
of the wards just above the punishment cell. 

A sudden wild, terrific scream, tortured and ago- 
nized, split the air. There was a frenzied scuffle, a 
booming thud, and a guard's voice shrilled out in 
frantic terror. 

Porter's tranquil face quivered. "Maralatt," he 
whispered. "Murder at last I" 

The next morning excitement shot like a flash 
from face to face. A big secret was out. Maralatt 
had nearly strangled a guard the night before. He 
was to be moved from his dungeon in solitary to 
a steel cage built in solid stone at the end of the east 
corridor. 

For months they had been building the cage. It 
was a revolting thing, made as if to house some fero- 
cious jungle beast. It opened into a niche in the 
stone about four by eight feet. In the niche Ira was 
to sleep. 

We got the tip from the warden's office. I had 
been sent on a message across the campus. I came 
into the alley-like corridor, passing a few guards. 
A look of riven terror held them staring and silent. 
Their frightened eyes were fastened on the door 
that led to the solitary cells. 

The door sprang open, and a spectacle to freeze 
the heart with its terrific and grisly horror was 
before us. I saw the Prison Demon. Hulk-shoul- 
dered, gigantic, lurched forward, he towered above 
the dozen guards like a huge, ferocious gorilla-man. 



WITH O. HENRY 165 

I could see his face. The hair was matted about 
him, the clothes torn in ragged strips. 

The guards stood at a distance, pushing him for- 
ward with long poles. They stood on either side. 
The demon could not escape. At the ends of the 
poles were strong iron hooks, fastened into his flesh, 
and as the guards pushed the hooks jagged into the 
prisoner's bones. He was compelled to walk. 

On his foot was the monstrous Oregon boot. Every 
step must have been an agony. There was no sound 
from the Prison Demon. Across the grass to the 
new-made dungeon in the old A and B block the 
hellish procession took its way. Ira Maralatt was 
riveted to his steel cage and a sign, "Prison Demon," 
pasted above the grating. 

The Prison Demon became an attraction at the 
penitentiary. His fame spread over the city — al- 
most over the State. He was known as the brute 
man — the hell fiend. Visitors wanted a sight of 
him. The old warden saw a chance to turn a penny. 
For 25 cents citizens were taken down the east cor- 
ridor and allowed to stare at the degraded thing that 
had once been a man. 

Ira was not a willing party to the bargain. He 
had a mean habit of crouching down in the far cor- 
ner of his black cage and cheating the visitors of 
their money's worth. One day a distinguished citi- 
zen stood in the alley half an hour waiting for the 
demon to exhibit himself. Threats and prods from 
the guards were fruitless. The matter was reported 
to the warden. Incensed and blustering, he came 
running down the corridor. 



166 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Open the door," he called to one of the guards. 
No one moved. They did not dare obey the order. 

"Open the door," Coffin yelled, snatching the club 
from one of the guards. He sprang into the cage, 
the club raised, rushing furiously toward the crouch- 
ing giant in the corner. 

"Come out, you fiend!" he bawled. The Demon 
reared, hurled himself upright and lunged with the 
violence of a raging Colossus against the warden. 
The sudden mad impact bowled the warden over. 

Ira snatched the club and flung it forth for a 
crashing blow on Coffin's head. Two guards dashed 
into the cage, caught Ira by the feet and sent him 
thundering backward against the wall. 

The visitor got his 25 cents' worth that day. 

The warden's escape was little short of a miracle. 
It taught him a lesson. He devised a safer scheme 
for bringing Maralatt out of his wretched hole. From 
a window in the inner hall he had a hose attached to 
the cage. It would send down a storming current 
of ice-cold water that would cut the flesh of the cow- 
ering Demon. 

Ira would come roaring like an infuriated Hon to 
the bars of the cage. He would grab the steel in his 
mighty hands, shaking it, and filling the alley with 
wild, maniac screams. 

This practice continued two or three months. The 
new warden came in, took down the sign from Ira's 
cage and prevented the shameful exhibits. 

The sequel to Ira's tragic history came many 
months later, after I had been appointed private 
secretary to Warden W. N. Darby. Darby had a 



WITH O. HENRY 167 

kind, magnificent sympathy in his enthusiastic na- 
ture. He had an eager ear for suggestions, even 
from the meanest convict. A chance incident opened 
the dark book of Ira Maralatt's ghastly life. 

One evening I was walking down the east corridor 
on my way to the asylum. I had taken an apple 
from the warden's table where I ate. I was bringing 
the fruit to a poor fellow in the prison "bughouse." 
He had lost his mind and his eyesight in the hoe pol- 
ishing shop. The hoes were polished on emery 
wheels. 

Millions of steel particles darted about, often 
puncturing the convicts in the face and neck. The 
sparks had gotten this poor devil in the forehead and 
eyes. I used to bring him an extra bit to eat. 

As a I passed the prison demon's cage I caught 
a glimpse of a haggard face at the low opening into 
the stone cell. Like a dumb, pathetic apparition, 
wretched and uncertain, the lumbering figure groped 
from corner to corner. The red, sunken eyes seemed 
to be burning deep into the smeared and pallid 
cheeks. 

One hand that was but a mammoth yellow claw 
was pressed against the rough mat of black hair. 
More Hke a hurt and broken Samson than like a hell 
fiend Ira Maralatt looked as his eye met mine in 
startled fear. 

Something in the defenseless misery of his glance 
held me. I ran back to his cage, took the apple from 
my pocket, pressed it through the bars, rolling it 
over to Maralatt. He drew back. I called softly to 
him. 



168 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"There's an apple for you, Ira." He made no 
answer. I stepped into a shadow in the corridor and 
waited. 

In a moment I saw the huge creature creeping 
stealthily forward on his hands and knees. The great 
yellow claw reached out. The broken cuff and link 
on his arm clanked on the cement. The chain was 
imbedded into his wrist and the flesh bulged out over 
it. The hand closed over the apple. The Demon 
leaped back to his corner. 

After that I felt myself drawn to the Prison 
Demon's cage. Ira no longer seemed a fiend to me, 
but an abused and tormented human. I sat outside 
his cell and called to him. He must have recognized 
mj^ voice, for he came creeping with a hunching 
ing swiftness to the front of the cage. He always 
went on all fours. 

"Did you like the apple, Ira?" He looked up at 
me, as though a thought were struggling in his mind. 
He did not answer, but sat there watching me. Then 
he shook his shaggy head and crept back to the stone 
niche. 

I thought I would ask Bill Porter about him. 
Whenever Ira had been beaten Bill, as the hospital 
attendant, had been called in to revive him. The 
theme nauseated Porter. The memory of the raw 
and bleeding flesh he had so many times sponged sent 
a shudder of revulsion through him. 

"Don't speak of it. This place becomes more un- 
endurable each moment. I try to write in the night. 
Some wretch, racked with unbearable pain, screams 
out. It goes hke a cold blade to the throat. It comes 



WITH O. HENRY 169 

into my story like a death rattle in the midst of a 
wedding. Then I can work no longer." 

"But you saw Ira and watched him more than 
others. Is he a demon?" 

"Colonel, the man should be in an insane asylum, 
not in a prison. There's something pressing on his 
brain. That's my opinion. 

I felt satisfied with the verdict. Every night I 
used to go down to Ira's cage, bringing him pieces of 
biscuit or meat from the warden's table. In a little 
while I knew that Ira counted on these visits. I 
would find him waiting for me. 

This wild man, who had become a thing of terror 
with his hand against his fellows, would be sitting 
close to the bars, his glowing, uncomprehending eyes 
peering with a glance of cringing supplication for 
my coming. 

He would take the biscuits from my hands and eat 
them before me. For fourteen years no one had ever 
seen the Prison Demon eat. His food would be 
shoved through the grating. He would not touch it. 
In the night he would drag it into his cell. 

We would talk about the prison. Ira could answer 
intelligently. Then I would try to draw his history 
from him. I could hardly ever get more than three 
or four words. He couldn't remember. He would 
point to his head and press his hand against it. 

We knew that Ira was in for murder, that he had 
choked a man to death. No one knew the circum- 
stances leading to the crime. No one had ever cared. 
I thought I would send a letter to some friends if 
he had any. They might help him. 



170 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Don't know. Head hurts," he would answer in 
a guttural indistinct voice. "Got a lick on the head 
once. Coal car hit me. 

Night and night, after the most laborious pauses, 
he would give me the same answers. He wanted to 
remember. When he failed he would press his power- 
ful hands together and turn to me in abject, appeal- 
ing despair. But once he seemed to have a gleam 
of recollection. 

I became absorbed in piecing together the solitary 
words he muttered. I must have been sitting there 
half an hour. A runner from the warden came shout- 
ing down the main corridor for me. 

"Where in hell have you been serenading?" Darby 
thundered. On a quick impulse I told him of the 
demon and the apple. 

"Ira's only a poor demented creature. He got a 
lick on the head once. He's harmless as an infant if 
you handle him right." 

Darby looked at me as though I were mad. 

"It's a fact. He eats out of my hand." 

"If that's true then I'll take him out of there." 

We went down the next morning to the cage. The 
warden ordered the door opened. I could see the 
dark outlines of Ira's figure. The guard was fright- 
ened. Darby took the key, turned the lock and 
stepped forward. If he had suddenly flung himself 
under a moving engine, death would not have seemed 
more certain. Ira drew back, hesitated, then leaped 
with all his mighty bulk toward Darby. 

"Ira!" I shouted. The massive figure stiffened as 
though an electric voltage had suddenly gone through 



WITH O. HENRY 171 

him. The Prison Demon dropped his arm to the 
ground and came creeping toward me. 

"Be good, Ira," I whispered. 

The warden braced himself. We went into the 
tiny cell room. The stench and filth of the hole came 
up like a sickening wave against us. "Come outside, 
Ira," the warden said. I nodded. "If I give you a 
good job, Ira, will you behave?" 

It was the first time Ira had heard a kind word 
from a prison official. He looked about, his eyes 
narrowing distrustfully, and began to edge away 
from the warden. 

"He'll treat you square, Ira." 

The towering giant coiild have crushed me in his 
two hands. He was about a foot taller than I, but 
he shuffled along at my side, looking down at me with 
a meek docility that filled the guards with wonder. 

The warden made straight for the hospital, ordered 
good food and skilled attention for the Demon. 
Three weeks later the Ohio penitentiary had a soft- 
tongued Hercules in the place of the insensate beast 
that had been Ira Maralatt. The doctors had found 
the skull pressing on the brain, operated and removed 
the "dent" that had sent Ira into his mad fits of mur- 
derous, unreasoning rage. Memory returned to him. 
Ira told a story, moving and compelHng in its ele- 
mental tragedy. 

He had been an iron puddler in the steel mills of 
Cleveland. Before a furnace, vast and roaring as a 
hell pit, the half -nude puddler works, stirring the 
molten iron. He breathes in a red hot, blasting hur- 
ricane. He moves in a bellowing clamor louder than 



172 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

the shout of a thousand engines. Only the strongest 
can withstand the deafening tumult, the scorching 
air of that bedlam. Ira Maralatt was one of these. 

There came a strike in the mills. Ira went home 
to his wife. He had been married but a year. They 
had been paying down on a little home. Ira could 
get no work. The walkout dashed their hopes. 

"I'm going to Canaltown, to the mines," he told 
the girl-wife one day. "I'll be back as soon as it's 
settled." She walked with him to the gate. He 
never saw her again. When Ira returned to the little 
home all that had been dear and sacred to him was 
gone. 

In West Virginia Maralatt got a job in the coal 
mines. He was working near one of the pillars. A 
coal car shot along the tracks to the chutes to be 
filled. The car with its tonnage started down the 
grade. 

Just at the pillar it should have switched. In- 
stead, it came heading straight toward Ira. Further 
down the track twenty men were working. The car, 
with the tremendous speed of the runaway, would 
have crushed them to a pulp. 

There was one chance of escape for them. Ira 
took it. The gigantic hands went out, caught the 
bolting car and with a smashing force sent the top- 
heavy four-wheeler sideways. 

In the terrible impact Ira caromed against the 
wall of the mine. The lives of twenty men were 
saved. The mashed and unconscious form of the 
gigantic Maralatt was dragged out and sent to the 
hospital. 



WITH O. HENRY 173 

Without a thought of himself and his own Hfe, 
Ira Maralatt had hurled himself across the path of 
the runaway coal car. If he had died his fellows 
would have exalted the memory of the man whose 
splendid courage had saved twenty lives. Ira lived 
— but the sacrifice took a dearer thing than mere 
existence. It gave him not honor, but a shameful 
brand. He became the Prison Demon. 

After the tragic disaster in the coal mine, Ira lay 
for months in the hospital. He was finally sent out 
as cured. 

The strike at the steel mills had been settled. Back 
to Cleveland and the little home the iron puddler 
went. 

There was a pathway, hedged with cowslips, lead- 
ing up to the door. Ira walked quickly, meaning to 
surprise the wife who had not heard from him in the 
months he had been at the hospital. 

There were new curtains at the window. A hand 
rustled muslin drapery aside. A strange face looked 
with doubtful question on the man at the hedge. 

"Good morning, sir," the woman said. 

"Good morning, indeed," Maralatt answered, 
mystified and startled. 

"Who lives here?" 

"What's that to you?" the woman snapped. 

"This is my home and my wife's!" Suddenly ex- 
cited and trembling, Ira turned upon the strange 
woman. 

"Where is my wife?" Where is Dora Maralatt?" 

"Oh, her I She's gone. I don't know where. Got 
put out. Are you the missing husband?" the woman 



174 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

sneered. "Well, there's your bag and baggage over 
in the lot there!" With a laughing shrug, she pushed 
the curtain to its place. 

Over in the lot, dumped out like a rubbish heap, 
Maralatt found the remnants of his home. There 
was the chest with the wrought-steel corners he had 
given Dora for a birthday gift — there was the dining- 
room table and the six chairs that had been the pride 
of the girl's heart. There, too, was a thing Ira had 
never seen before — a clothes basket tied with pink 
stuff and ribbons. 

Distracted, enraged, like one suddenly demented, 
he ran back to the cottage door and banged on the 
panel. 

"Go away from here with your noise," the woman 
called. "I'll have you arrested!" 

"Open the door," Maralatt stormed, "please, I'll 
not come in. Open it just a moment. My wife, did 
you see her go? Is she ahve? Tell me just that. 
How long is she gone? Where can she be?" 

The woman softened. "Don't get so excited and 
I'll tell you. She went out alive. But she was pretty 
well done in. She looked about gone. I don't know 
where she went. Maybe she's dead now." 

"The baby— did it die, too?" 

"I don't know about that. She left before it was 
born. "Well, now, I'm sorry for you, poor fellow, 
but I don't know where she is. I'll tell you — you 
might go down to the landlord. He knows. He's 
the one that ordered those things dumped out. He's 
down at the same old office." 

Before the words were out of her mouth Mara- 



WITH O. HENRY 175 

latt bolted down the path, tearing like a wild man 
through the streets. "Where's my wife?" Where's 
Dora Maralatt? Where's the girl you put out of the 
bungalow on the hill?" 

In a rushing fury the questions tumbled from his 
lips. The agent looked at him with contemptuous 
insult. "Who let this maniac into the office? Throw 
him out?" 

The order calmed Maralatt. He leaned forward, 
touching the man's hand. "Excuse me, I'm a bit 
excited. I've been away. You know me, don't you? 
I was buying that little cottage on C street. I've 
been sick. I came back. I can't find my wife. 
Could you tell me where she is? They say you put 
her out." 

"Oh, you're the missing puddler! Well, you've 
lost the house. Yes, the woman was put out. I 
remember it all now. She made a fuss about it. We 
had to throw her out." 

"Where is she?" Maralatt was breathing quick 
and short in a choking panic. "Where's my wife 
gone?" 

"Oh, get oiit of here! The house is lost. What 
do I care about your wife. Why didn't you stick 
around and look after her?" 

"Well, you put her out, didn't you? Where did 
she go to?" 

"The damn' scrub's in hell, where she ought to be! 

Who cares about your of a wife anyway! 

Get out of here!" 

The balance slipped. A blood-crazed panther, 
Maralatt, leaped over the counter, "My what of a 



176 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

wife! What — what — what — you damned scoundrel! 
My wife — what? Say it again! You thief, you vil- 
lain, say it again!" 

Iron hands swooped the agent from the floor, 
wrenching the neck as though it were but a chicken's. 
Back and forth until the skin on the scarlet cheeks 
was hke to burst, Maralatt knocked that grasping 
head. It took three officers to break those hands 
loose from the dead man's throat. 

A foaming maniac, Maralatt was knocked insen- 
sible, thrown into the patrol wagon, and taken off to 
the station house. 

His mind was gone. He was sent up for life to the 
Ohio penitentiary. No defense had been made for 
him. 

This was the story Ira told the warden after the 
operation at the prison hospital had restored his 
memory. The giant Hercules was no longer a gorilla 
man. Clean, quiet, spent, he sat hke a kind old 
patriarch and told the aching tale. 

Darby made him caretaker in the condemned row. 
Ira cleaned out the cells, swept the room where the 
electric chair was kept and took the food to these con- 
victs. Doomed men, counting the days between 
them and the chair, played checkers with the prison 
demon now. In the ghastly fear of the nightmare 
days before execution many a lost unfortunate found 
comfort in the benediction of Maralatt's sympathetic 
presence. 

I used to visit Ira in the condemned row. He was 
happy and serene. Some one had given him a pair 
of canary birds. The warden allowed him to raise 



WITH O. HENRY 177 

them in his cell. First he had four, then ten, be- 
fore long the dull, clamorous silence of the doomed 
men was filled with the joyous, thrilling song of 
many canary birds. 

It was a touching thing to see the white-haired 
giant sitting in his cell — the sunlight coming in in 
golden radiance through the window in the inner 
wall, and these yellow fluttering, singing things 
perched on his shoulders and resting in the palms of 
his great hands. 

Dark faces pressed against the bars of the con- 
demned cells. "Ira, bring me a bird, let me hold it a 
moment!" one would call. "Ira, have Melba sing 
the "Toreador," another would grimly jest. In the 
near approach of their death, Ira and his birds and 
his gentle ministrations were like a prophecy of liv- 
ing hope. 

One day Warden Darby hurried into the office. 
He had been up to Cleveland. His voice was brus- 
que. "I have discovered something," he said. "Send 
for Ira Maralatt, at once." 

"Sit down, Ira, and be calm." The warden could 
scarcely suppress the emotion of his own voice. "I've 
been up to Cleveland. Ran into the strangest thing. 
Guess you told a straight story, all right!" 

"Yes, sir," Ira answered, a frightened light in his 
eye. "Yes, sir it was the truth. Leastways, I'm 
pretty sure it was. Surely, I couldn't have dreamed 
it, could I?" 

"Now, that's all right. But listen to me. You 
had a wife, you say? Dora, that was her name, 
wasn't it? Well, she died — died right after they put 



178 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

her out of the cottage. The baby hved. She's alive 
today. I met her. She's pretty. She was adopted 
by wealthy people here in Columbus. They're 
friends of the governor. I just happened to talk 
about you. The girl's foster mother is a relative of 
your wife's. She thought you were a maniac. I told 
her the truth. 

"Ira, go over to the State shop, get a suit and 
shoes. You're pardoned. I took it up with the Gov- 
ernor. You go out tomorrow. 

With a shock of bewildered emotion that sent a 
quiver of sobbing happiness into his voice, Ira Mara- 
latt put out his hands to the warden. 

"Does the girl know?" 

"Now, no, they haven't told her. It would be too 
sudden a strain." 

The next morning Ira, in his cheap suit, the 
squeaky prison shoes and a light straw hat, came 
to the warden's office. His gigantic frame was 
stooped and his face shot through with nervous ex- 
citement. 

"You did all this, Mr. Al," he said, the tears crowd- 
ing into his eyes. "Just think what you did when you 
rolled that apple to me." He hesitated a moment. 
"Mr. Al, she won't ever recognize me, will she? I 
don't think I'd like her to know her father was the 
Prison Demon." 

When Darby handed him the pardon and the five 
dollars his hands shook. "I don't know how to thank 
you, warden!" 

"You don't have to — God knows you've paid for 
iti" 



WITH O. HENRY 179 

Ira took two of his little canaries with him. "I'll 
give them to the girl for a present. I want to see 
her. I have to see her." He shook hands with 
Darby and me. 

A week passed. We heard no word from him. 
The warden became alarmed. "I wonder if anything 
could have happened to the old man?" Maralatt was 
but 46. His terrible suffering during 18 years 
in prison had broken even his magnificent strength. 
He seemed about 60. "I wonder if he went to see 
his daughter? Funny, I didn't hear." 

It worried Darby so much he inquired. He sent 
for the girl's foster mother. He told her of Ira and 
the canaries. Back came the frantic answer from 
the daughter herself. In an hour she was at the war- 
den's office. 

"An old man with canaries?" Yes, an old man had 
come with them. She had the birds now. "What 
about it? That man, my father!" 

"Why didn't some one tell me? How dare they 
keep it from me. That's what he meant when he left. 
That's why he called me little Dora. Oh, what shall 
we do now?" 

In broken sentences she told of the mysterious 
visit of the old bird-peddler. Ira had gone up the 
steps of the palatial home where the girl lived. He 
had brought the little cage with the birds. Perhaps 
he had intended to tell Mary he was her father. The 
sight of her beauty, her culture, her happiness had 
chilled his ardor. The grand old fellow could not 
bear to spoil her glad youth with the tragedy of his 
bleak life. He had left with his claim unspoken. 



180 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

The girl was coming down the stairs as the old man 
rang the bell. The butler had denied him entrance. 
And the girl had run forward and ordered the old man 
to come in. 

"I thought, Miss, perhaps you would buy these 
birds. I'm poor and they are wonderful singers. I 
raised them myself." 

And just out of sympathy for the pathetic old 
stranger, the girl had bought the canaries. He would 
only take a dollar from her. She had not understood. 
He had looked at her and the tears had streamed 
down his cheeks. 

"Good-by, little Dora," he said as he left. He stood 
at the door as though he were about to say something 
further and then he looked at her with a queer, sad 
light on his face and went down the steps. 

They thought he was a harmless, unbalanced old 
oddity. 

"Where can I find him? Where shall I look for 
him? Why didn't some one tell me?" the girl was 
torn with grief. "Hurry, let us look now." 

Outside it was snowing. There had been a wind 
storm for a week. Maralatt's daughter and the war- 
den searched in every street and alley for the old man. 
He was nowhere to be found. 

One night there was a knock at the guard-room 
door and a faint voice called out, "Let me come in, 
please." The captain of the guard opened the door. 
Ira Maralatt, his thin prison suit drenched and hang- 
ing in a limp rag about him, was kneeling in the snow 
at the prison door. 

"Let me in, please, I have nowhere to go." 



WITH O. HENRY 181 

"No, no, go away, you're pardoned. I can't let 
you in, it's against the law," the captain answered. 

The warden was informed. 

"Who was it?" he asked. 

"Maralatt," they answered. 

He came rushing to the gate and ordered it op- 
ened. Maralatt was not there. 

Darby swore at them. 

"Don't you know we've been looking everywhere 
for him for weeks?" 

Beyond the walls, flinging himself along, the war- 
den went on the search. He came back fifteen min- 
utes later, the half-frozen Maralatt limping along at 
his side. He found him down in the snow near the 
river. Ira was burning up with fever. His face was 
already stricken with death. 

Everywhere he went asking for work, he said, they 
had refused him. They said he was too old. Finally 
he gave up trying. 

The warden sent for Maralatt's daughter. 

The young girl, graceful and white as an angel, 
flung herself into the old man's arms. 

"Don't die, daddy! Why didn't you tell me? See, 
I'm your girl, Mary. Just look at me I Oh, why 
didn't I know? If you only knew how many times 
I longed for a father — any one, any kind. Why 
didn't you tell me?" 

Maralatt looked at her in dim, feverish gladness. 
He took the delicate hands in his gigantic palm and 
turned to her. 

"I looked all over for you, Mary," he said. "I'm 
so glad you came." 



182 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

With a smile of wondrous peace on his lips, the 
prison demon sank back on the pillows. The old 
hero had won his palm at last. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Methods of O. Henry; his promotion; the singing of Sally Castleton; 
O. Henry's indifference ; the explanation. 

The shadows of a thousand Dick Prices and Ira 
Maralatts skulked like unhappy ghosts through the 
cell corridors of the Ohio penitentiary. The memory 
of a thousand tragedies seemed to abide in the very 
air of the ranges. Men who allowed themselves to 
come under the persistent gloom of these haunting 
presences went mad. 

The rest of us sought an outlet in gayety— in a 
hundred trivial little incidents that would bring a 
laugh out of all proportion to their funniness. In 
self-defense, the convict becomes hardened to the 
brutal suffering of the life about him. 

If any one had heard Billy Raidler, Bill Porter 
and I, as we talked and guffawed in the prison post- 
office, he would have rated us an unthinking trio of 
irresponsible scamps. 

We never aired our melancholy, but we would 
wrangle and jest by the hour over the probable course 
a fly batting itself against the post-office window might 
take if we let it out — over the origin of the black race 
and the finish of the Caucasian family. 

Or we would imagine that the prison was suddenly 
crushed to pieces in an earthquake, and we would 



184 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

begin to speculate on the menace of our presence to 
a terror-stricken society. No subject was too ridicu- 
lous to beguile an hour away. 

Porter was not supposed to visit the post-office while 
he was on duty at the hospital. As he never violated 
any of the prison rules, he alwaj^s made it a point to 
come on business. Billy Raidler was a semi-invalid, 
and offered an unfailing excuse. Billy's amber hair 
was falling out. He hounded Porter to bring him a 
remedy. 

"Look here, Bill," the ex-train robber would say, 
"if you coidd get the arsenic out of that rock-ribbed 
old Coffin why can't you rouse the hair that ought 
to be on my scalp?" 

Warden Coffin, by some mistake, had been given 
an overdose of arsenic. Antidotes failed. Porter 
was called in. He saved the life of Coffin. This in- 
cident happened before my arrival at the "pen," but 
Raidler never gave Porter any peace about it. Por- 
ter always maintained that the warden was dying of 
fright, not of the arsenic. He said his antidote was 
"simplicity." 

"Simplicity or duplicity," Raidler countered, "you 
interfered with the ways of Divine Providence, Bill, 
when you saved Coffin's life. Now come through 
and give the archduke a helping hand. Put a little 
fertilizer on this unirrigated thatch of mine." 

So Porter came over one day, looking very im- 
portant and complacent. One short, fat hand was 
stuck in his vest and in the other he carried a glove. 
Porter was an unmitigated dandy, even in the prison. 
He liked rich, well-fitting clothes. He abhorred noisy 



WITH O. HENRY 185 

styles or colors. I never saw him when he was not 
well groomed and neat in his appearance. 

"Adonis Raidler," Porter ceremoniously laid the 
glove on the desk and drew forth a bulky, odorous 
package, "behold the peerless hair-regenerator com- 
pounded after tireless, scientific research by one un- 
redeemed Bill Porter." 

Raidler grabbed the bottle and pulled out the cork. 
The heavy pungence of wintergreen filled the office. 

"The scent is in harmony with your esthetic soul, 
Billy," Porter said. "Elusive fragrance might not 
reach that olfactory nerve of yours." 

Billy doused some of the liquid on his head and be- 
ban to rub it viciously in. He had the most child-hke 
faith in Porter's genius as a chemist. Every night 
after that I went to sleep fairly drugged by the cloud 
of wintergreen under which Billy submerged him- 
self. 

Every morning he would bring over the comb to 
show me that fewer hairs had come out than the day 
before. Whatever Billy wanted his hair for, none of 
us could understand. The hair-restorer was nothing 
but bum bay rum outraged by an overdose of winter- 
green fragrance. Either Porter's patent, Billy's mas- 
saging or his faith stopped the emigration of his hair. 

"Now that your locks, thanks to my scientific skill, 
promise to grow as long as a musician's," Porter 
boasted, "why not get a fife, Billy, and learn to play 
it? The colonel here will teach you. And then the 
three of us will set forth from this fortress of mighty 
stone and like troubadours of old we will go a-min- 
streling from village to village!" 



186 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Porter had a guitar and he picked it with graceful 
touch. I played the tuba. If Billy could only play 
the fife, what a joyous troupe we would make! 

The idea tickled Porter. He was really in earnest 
about it. I think his ideal of existence was just such 
a free vagabondage. Many and many a time in the 
post-office he had brought up the subject. 

"Will you get that fife, Billy?" he said one night. 
"I have a plan. We will go over and serenade Miles 
Ogle. If he likes the tufted tinkle of our mellow 
madness, why forth let us stride to woo the belle 
demoiselles of all Beautydom!" 

Miles Ogle was the greatest counterfeiter in the 
United States. He was serving a long sentence at 
the Ohio "pen." 

"Would it not be kind to trill forth a gladsome 
melody to Miles?" Porter's low, whispering voice lent 
an air of mystery to his lightest comment. I always 
felt like a conspirator when his hushed tones kept us 
captive. "Miles, you know, has a wholesome appre- 
ciation of the golden note!" 

Porter often spoke to me in these later prison days 
of his serenading in Austin. He said that he belonged 
to a troupe of singers. "We went about playing and 
serenading at the windows of all the fair maids in 
Austin!" Playing, singing, writing a sonnet, sketch- 
ing a cartoon — what a lovable ne'er-do-well he would 
have been if this very breezy negligence had not 
caught him in a net of unfortunate circumstances at 
the bank. 

"I can think of nothing more delightful," he said, 
"than to strap a harp to my back and saunter from 



WITH O. HENRY 187 

castle to castle living in the gracious beauty of poetry 
and music. 

"We have the dungeon here, but we lack both the 
drawbridge and the castle. How sweet it would be 
to sit in the silver moonlight, to summon the fairies 
from their leafy pavilions with the strains of our 
warblings! And then to lie back on the grass and 
weave fantastic dreams to lighten the drab heart of 
the world!" 

Porter was feeling very gay this night. A hope 
he had silently cherished. As always he came over 
to share his happiness. He had won an honor craved 
by every convict in the "stir." 

There was a light tap at the post-office door. Billy 
opened it and took something from the prisoner 
standing there and softly closed the door. He handed 
a card to me. In his own handwriting was Bill Por- 
ter's name and underneath a drawing of the steward's 
office. 

"Who brought the card?" I asked. 

"Bill; he's out there. Shall I let him in?" Raidler 
was in a whimsical mood. The light tap was repeated. 
I answered it. 

"Gentlemen, why be so exclusive?" Porter walked 
in with a very pompous air, his shoulders thrown 
back in an exaggerated swagger. "Permit me to in- 
form you that I have changed my residence. The card 
will enlighten you as to my present domicile. I moved 
to-day." 

There was a new enthusiasm in his bantering voice. 
Porter had been appointed secretary to the steward. 
The position, with the single exception of the secre- 



188 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

taryship to the warden, was the hest in the pen. It 
took him beyond the walls. The steward's office was 
directly across the street from the pen, the edge of 
the building skirting the river. 

"Colonel, you would envy me — " the voice was a 
low chuckle. 

"I have a desk near the window — a big desk with 
pigeon-holes. I have all the books I want. I can 
read and think without interruption. Now I can do 
something." 

Seldom had Porter alluded to his ambition to write. 
We sent out some of his stories, but he let us think 
they were done just for diversion. The new position 
gave him plenty of opportunity to try out his talents. 
He spent every spare moment "practicing," as he 
used to put it. 

We talked about literature and its purposes very 
often now, for I was even freer than Bill. I had been 
made secretary to Warden Darby. I had even man- 
aged to worm myself out of convict clothes. When 
I went into Darby's office I was brought into con- 
tact with all the distinguished visitors of the Statjs 
and Nation. 

"I look pretty shabby," I hinted to Darby. "I 
ought to be more up to my position." He turned to 
me. 

"Sure," he said; "go over to the State shop and get 
the best suit of clothes you can order." 

He meant the best suit of convict clothes. I picked 
out a fine piece of serge and ordered as clever a suit as 
the Governor might have worn. When Darby saw 
me without the stripes, he gasped. 



WITH O. HENRY 189 

"Pretty slick," was the only comment he made. I 
never wore the stripes again. 

Nearly every night Porter would come across the 
street to visit Billy and me. We would talk by the 
hour, filling him up on the exploits of bandit days, 
spinning out the yarns in choice outlaw lingo. He 
listened captive. The stories seemed to suggest ideas 
to him. He never used anything just as it was told 
to him. 

"You ought to startle the world," he said to me one 
day. 

"How, by shooting it up?" 

"No, colonel, but you have a wonderful lot of 
stories. You can view life from a thousand view- 
points." 

I often wondered at Porter's methods. It seemed 
to me that he ovei'looked innumerable stories by his 
aloofness. He did not seem to have the slightest de- 
sire to ferret out the secrets of the men in the pen. 
The convict as a subject for his stories did not appeal 
to him. 

I am convinced that he felt himself different from 
the average criminal. It was not until he returned to 
the world and suffered from its coldness that his sym- 
pathies were broadened and his prejudices mellowed. 
^ One very odd experience revealed this trait in Por- 
ter. I used to play in the prison band every Sunday 
at chapel. One morning a song thrilled out from the 
the women's loft. 

It was the most magnificent contralto voice I have 
ever heard. It had a purple depth and intensity of 
feelinpf in its tones and at times there was a mournful. 



190 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

piercing pathos in it that struck into the soul like a 
heartbroken wail. 

I looked up, trying to trace the voice to its owner. 
And finally it seemed to me that a tall, proud looking- 
girl — a Southerner of exceeding beauty — was the 
singer. Her skin was moon white in its purity, she 
had splendid gray eyes and hair that fell in a golden 
radiance about her face. I became greatly interested. 

"There's a girl in the pen, Bill," I told Porter, "and 
you want to come to chapel next Sunday and hear 
her sing." 

"Colonel, I fear you jest. I wouldn't go into the 
chapel to hear the seven choirs of angels let alone a 
wretched feminine convict!" 

Mrs. Mattie Brown was matron of the women's 
ward. I was sent over on business. I took the chance 
to satisfy my curiosity. 

"Who is the prima donna that sings on Sundays?'* 
I asked. 

"Would you like to see her?" the matron said, look- 
ing at me with quiet interest. "You might be able to 
put in a good word for her and maybe get her a par- 
don. She's a good girl." Mrs. Brown was always 
trying to help the women convicts. Her understand- 
ing was as warm as the sun and as deep as the sea. 

"It's a terrible thing to get it the way she did," the 
matron said. ' 'She's in on a charge of murder. She 
got life for it." 

The girl came down. She was very slender and the 
cheap, calico polka-dot dress was out of tone with her 
rich beauty. She looked like a young queen, whose 
rags could not conceal her distinction. 



WITH O. HENRY 191 

As soon as she stood before me I was embarrassed. 
I did not like to ask her questions, but for once in my 
life curiosity obsessed me. I told her so. 

"Your singing attracted me," I said. "I listen for 
it every Sunday." 

A bitter shadow went like an ugly blot across her 
face and the girl looked up, her clear eyes marred by 
their look of self-abasement. 

"Sing? Oh, yes; I can sing," the voice that was 
like amber honey mocked. "I sang myself into hell. 
I don't mind telling you. It isn't often that anyone 
is interested enough to listen. My people haven't 
come near me. They think I disgraced them. Maybe 
so, I don't care. I haven't seen a soul from the out- 
side in four years. One good thing about prisons, 
though, you don't live very long in them." 

The cynical despondency of this girl, who was not 
more than 25, robbed me of composure. I couldn't 
think of a thing to say to her. She was high bred and 
nervous. 

"Isn't it terrible to be scoffed at and have your 
friends put their hands over their mouths and whis- 
per 'Murderess' when you pass? Oh — I know — " 
a shudder caught her. "That's what happened to 
me!" her lips suddenly trembled and her chin shook 
pitifully. She turned and rushed sobbing down the 
corridor. 

As the girl's rough calico whisked around the cor- 
ner, the matron shook her head. 

"I made a mistake, I shouldn't have brought her 
down. I didn't think it would affect her so. Now 
she'll be melancholy for a week. Isn't she a pitiful 



192 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

figure I I wish I could do something for her I" 

"Was she guilty?" 

*'Its pretty hard to say. A man about killed 
Sally's baby. The man was the baby's father. Sally 
turned around and shot him through the heart. She's 
glad about it. I mean she's glad about the killing. 

"It was shameful the way her mother and her sis- 
ters went back on her. She sat in the court all alone 
and not a soul was with her when she was condemned. 
They took her off to the pen as though she were a 
gutter snipe. 

"And Sally had supported that mother and sisters. 
It was her singing that kept them from starvation." 

Sally Castleton was sent up from Hamilton county 
(Cincinnati) for life. The war had robbed her peo- 
ple of their wealth, but not of their pride. It was 
more in keeping with their type of dignity to starve 
than to send their daughters to work. 

Sally had a gift in her voice. She sang in the choir 
of a Cincinnati cathedral. The family managed to 
exist on what she earned. 

The son of a banker in Cincinnati began to attend 
the services. It was the old tale. He saw Sally. 
They were both young. The girl was attractive far 
beyond the measure of average loveliness. They 
loved. 

There were picnics in the suburbs. The banker's 
son came down to be with Sally. There were rides 
in a four-in-hand. Old women would run to the 
windows to catch a glimpse of the handsome banker 
and the town's beauty. It would be a fine match and 
an honor to the community. 



WITH O. HENRY 193 

After a while the banker's son came less and less 
to Hamilton county. And one night Sally ran away 
and didn't return. 

She went to Cincinnati and got a job in a laundry. 
She saved up every penny. She never asked aid of 
anyone. 

The matron told me half the story. Sally finished 
it one day a week later when I met her in the matron's 
office. 

"Why didn't I go to him? Oh— I knew— " Sally 
clasped her hands. They were delicate as white 
flowers. "I knew," she went on, after a wistful pause, 
"he wouldn't want to be bothered. I didn't want to 
hear him tell me to go away." 

"You see, well, as long as I didn't absolutely know 
what he would say, I could comfort myself imagining 
that he was thinking of me and wondering what had 
become of me. I used to He awake at night. I was 
too tired to sleep. 

"I would see him rushing about the city looking for 
me. Then he would find me and tell me not to worry 
—it would be all right. It was easy to console myself. 

"But I knew I was fooling myself. I knew he 
would have turned his back on me. He just changed 
all at once when he knew. He looked at me with a 
glance of such disgust and hatred I felt as if a cold 
frost spread over me. He grabbed up his hat and 
ran down the walk. Then he turned and came back, 
and tried to be kind. 

" 'Sally, I'll look out for you, I'll come again next 
Sunday,' " he said. I believed him and I waited and 
waited. I made up excuses for him. But at last I 



194 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

knew that he was never going to come. I couldn't 
stand the way my mother and sisters looked at me. 
One night I tied up a few things in a bundle and 
sneaked out the kitchen door after they were all in 
bed." 

SaUy had saved up enough for her expenses. 
When the baby was a few weeks old she went back to 
work in the laundry. The old woman where she 
roomed looked after the little thing. But when it 
was five or six months old it got sick and Sally had 
to quit and take care of it. 

It was all right as long as the little money lasted. 
Sally's funds were very small. She gave up eating 
and spent the money for medicine for the baby. It 
didn't get any better. She couldn't afford a doctor. 
She was beside herself with misery. 

"If you knew how it looked!" Sally pressed her 
hands together, her eyes filled with tears. "It had 
such a dear little white face and the biggest blue eyes. 
It would turn its head and its poor little mouth would 
struggle as if it wanted to cry, but was too feeble. 
It broke my heart to watch it. 

"I just got frantic. I used to hold it in my arms, 
its face pressed against my throat and sometimes I 
could scarcely feel its breath. I would run up and 
down the room. I was afraid to look at it for fear it 
was dying on me. 

"Oh, God, you don't know how terrible it is to see 
the only thing you have in the world just getting 
weaker and weaker and nothing done to help it. I 
never slept — I got so I just prayed and prayed to 
keep it with me. 



WITH O. HENRY 195 

"And one day it took a spasm. I thought it was 
gone. I didn't care what I did. I would have crawled 
in the dust to save it. 

"I went to the bank. I waited outside for him. He 
came down the steps. I followed, waiting until no 
one was near. Then I edged quietly up to him. 
Thil,' I said. 

"He stiffened up as though an electric shock had 
gone through him. He turned to me in angry con- 
tempt, 'What are you dogging me for?' 

"It was all I could do to keep from crying. He 
hurried off and I went stumbling after him. I caught 
him by the sleeve. 

" 'Phil, the baby is dying. I haven't a cent. Oh, I 
wouldn't let you do anything for it if I could only 
keep it alive myself. I haven't eaten anything but 
tea and bread for weeks. And now my last nickel is 
gone. Phil, will you pay for a doctor for it? It's 
yours, Phil, your very own. It's the image of you. 
It has your eyes.' 

"For a minute it seemed to me that a look of exulta- 
tion went across his face. But maybe I imagined it, 
for he caught my fingers and knocked them off his 
arm as though I were a leper. 

"It does, does it? Well, if it's dying, let it die. I 
can't keep it alive. Is it my fault if it wants to die?" 

"No, no, it's not your fault. But will you help? 
Will you pay for the doctor — will you help me to 
take care of it?" 

" 'Say, beat it and be damn' quick about it,' he an- 
swered. I couldn't believe it. I kept on talking and 
walking at his side. I don't know what I said. We 



196 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

passed a policeman. He stopped. 'Officer,' he said, 
'arrest this rag-picker, will you?'" 

They arrested Sally and took her to the Cincinnati 
jail. The man had sworn to a warrant charging her 
with attempted blackmail. The days passed. The 
case was not called. 

Every day was an agony for Sally. The thought 
of the dying baby was like a hot coal on the girl's 
mind. She went to the matron about it. The matron 
went out to see the baby. When she returned she told 
Sally she had taken it to a hospital. 

The Salvation Army used to visit the jail and get 
the prisoners to sing hymns. Sally joined in the 
chorus. A male prisoner heard her. He went out 
the next day for the Ohio pen to spend the rest of his 
life there. But he left a present for Sally with the 
desk sergeant. "Give these two bucks to the girl 
with the voice, will you?" he said. "Her singing 
did a lot for me." 

Sally was finally called before the night court. The 
man did not appear. She was dismissed with a repri- 
mand. As she passed the desk sergeant he handed 
her the two dollars. The gift finished the wreck of 
Sally's broken life. 

She was in such a hurry to get out she ran down 
the halls, the matron rushing along at her side. "It's 
too bad, honey, they brought you in here. You didn't 
deserve it. I'm awful sorry for you." As Sally 
got to the door, she touched her elbow. 

"Honey, I hate to tell you — the poor little baby 
is dead!" 

It was like a ruffian blow struck across the face 



WITH O. HENRY 197 

of a little child. It stunned Sally — left her limp 
and quivering. The baby was dead — 

With a feeble, tormented sob, she put her hands 
over her head and began to run as though men and 
women were chasing her, pelting her with stones. 

"Listen, honey," the matron caught up with her. 
"You can stay here. It won't do you no good to get 

out. The baby died three days ago. Stay here for 
a while." 

"Oh, God, no. Let me get out." 

The door opened and the half -demented creature 
ran out, one thought uppermost. She would go 
down to the river. The blasting wind tore the clothes 
almost off her back. The chill went to the marrow. 

A light flared out from a shop window, the girl 
dallied a moment in its warmth. Old jewelry, em- 
blems, silver plate glinted in the show case. In one 
corner were three revolvers. Sally looked at them 
fascinated. A cold fury of revenge swept over her. 

Up to that moment the anguish of loss ate at her — 
she had seen only the suffering baby face. Now she 
saw the man and the lashing contempt on his hand- 
some features. She went in and bought one of the 
pistols. 

As soon as she had it in her hands, it seemed pull- 
ing her down like a coffin weight. She dropped it 
in her blouse and went out, scooting down one street 
and up another, so cold, so frenzied, so impatient for 
the morning to come she did not even known that 
she was crying and calling out in her misery until a 
drunken old woman stopped her. 

The bedraggled old creature took hold of her and 



198 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Sally let herself be jostled along to the dark, wretched 
hole where the woman lived. She lit a charcoal stove, 
and in its feeble glow Sally tried to warm herself. 

The damp hole was ahve with baleful shadows. 
Across the bare walls evil figures passed. Now it 
was the man as he stood rigid and beckoned to the 
police — now the hulking officer lurching forward, 
grabbing her by the shoulders. And again it was 
the mother and sisters, hunting the girl down with 
their scornful looks. 

Only once did Sally see the baby. It seemed to be 
lying on the floor, its mouth writhing, its httle hands 
opening and closing. The father walked up to it and 
brought his boot down on the plaintive little face, 
crushing the scalp and manghng the tender flesh. 

"God, God, save!" Sally called out as the night- 
mare passed. 

At last it was morning. Sally had to wait until 
noon. Not for one moment had her resolution fal- 
tered. She went straight to the bank and stood be- 
hind a column waiting for the man. It seemed that 
every one in the building rushed out at the stroke of 
12 — every one but Philip Austin. 

Sally began to tremble. She put her hand to her 
pocket. The pistol was there. "Send him out quick, 
quick," she chattered in an insane prayer. "Send 
him out before I lose courage." 

Down the street came a policeman. Sally cow- 
ered behind the stone pillar. The officer eyed her, 
walked a few paces, looked back and went on. 

"Nobody here now, nobody here," Sally muttered 
to herself. "Send liim out now." 



WITH O. HENRY 199 

A big form strode down the corridor and the next 
second Philip Austin swung through the door. 
Proud and magnificent, he walked like a prince. He 
walked as he did that joyous day when he swept his 
hat down in a lordly salute as Sally came down the 
cathedral steps. He had the same kingly smile on 
his lips. 

Sally's nerve went loose as a taut string when one 
end is suddenly released. She ran up to him piti- 
ful, distracted, beside herself with misery. 

"Phil — oh, Phil, the baby died! You put me in 
jail — and it died. It died without any one near it. 
It died because you wouldn't take care of it." 

Not knowing what she was doing or saying in her 
beating grief, Sally flung herself into Austin's arms. 

"The baby died— it's dead, dead. Oh, Phil, the 
baby is dead!" 

With one swift, angry wrench the man caught her 
violently by the wrists. 

" you, you little hag — ^what do I 

care about your brat! Let it die. Now go — and 
don't hang around slopping tears at me. Let the 
brat die!" 

Cold, scornful contempt scowling his features, 
Austin went to shove Sally from him. There was a 
little gasp, a tussle, a scream of hurt, sobbing agony, 
and the double-action revolver was jammed against 
the man's stomach. 

"You don't care? Oh, God!" The trigger 
snapped. 

"He looked me straight in the eye. He looked 
startled and frightened. He knew I did it. I saw it 



200 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

in his eye. He looked at me for just a moment and 
then he went down in a skmip as though his backbone 
had suddenly melted." 

From everywhere men and women darted into the 
street. They leaned over the prostrate form. And 
when they saw that the banker's son was dead, they 
turned on Sally with their fists and one giant tore 
her cheek open with a vicious blow. 

"But he knew I did it. I saw that in his last 
glance!" Sally's face was daubed with tears, but 
there was a triumphant smile in her eye at the mem- 
ory of Austin's death. "That's satisfaction enough 
for me. I'm content to spend my days here." 

The girl's trial had taken just one day. The jury 
found her guilty. She was nineteen. That fact 
saved her from the death penalty. 

Sally was a Southerner, with all the hot, proud 
vengeance of Kentucky in her veins. Her story 
moved me more than all the horrors I had felt in 
prison. I could understand the murderous fury that 
swept over her when the fellow turned her down. I 
went to the warden's office and blurted the whole 
story out to him. 

"When I hear things like this, I want to leave the 
damn' hell." Darby did resign eventually because 
he could not endure the job of electrocuting the con- 
demned. "But some one's got to be here. I hope I 
do the service well." 

Darby said he would try for a pardon. It would 
have been granted on his recommendation, but the 
family of the dead man heard about it. They weren't 
satisfied with the mischief their blackguard son had 




Al Jennings, the author 



WITH O. HENRY 201 

already done. They went to work and villified Sally 
until there wasn't a scrap of flesh left on her bones. 
The pardon was denied. 

Every time I heard that voice with its cascade of 
golden notes rippling down from the convict wom- 
en's loft in the chapel it sent daggers through me. 

This was a tale, it seemed to me, worthy of the 
genius of Bill Porter. I told it to him the next after- 
noon. He listened rather indifferently and when I 
was finished, he turned to Billy Raidler, "I've 
brought you a box of cigars." 

I was furious at his unmoved coldness. I turned 
my back on him in angry humiliation. I wanted 
Porter to write a story about Sally — to make the 
world ring with indignation over the wrong that had 
been done. And the story did not seem to make the 
slightest impression on him. At that time my taste 
ran entirely to the melodrama. I could not under- 
stand Porter's saner discrimination. 

He had distinct theories as to the purpose of the 
short story. We often discussed it. Now it seemed 
to me that he was deliberately refusing to carry out 
his ideas. 

"The short story," he used to say, "is a potent 
medium of education. It should combine humor and 
pathos. It should break down prejudice with under- 
standing. I propose to send the down-and-outers 
into the drawing-rooms of the 'get-it-alls,* and I 
intend to insure their welcome. All that the world 
needs is a little more sympathy. I'm going to make 
the American Four Hundred step into the shoes of 
the Four Million." 



202 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Porter said this long before any of the stories that 
make up "The Four Million" had been written. 

"Don't you think Sally's story has the real heart 
throb in it?" 

"Colonel, the pulse beats too loud," Porter yawned. 
"It's very commonplace." 

"And so is all life commonplace," I fired back. 
"That's just what genius is for — you're supposed to 
take the mean and the ordinary and tell it in a vital 
way — in a way that makes the old drab flesh of us 
glow with a new light." 

I also was writing a story in those days and I had 
my own methods and theories. They usually dried 
out when I tried to run them into the ink well and 
onto the paper. 

There was no use in trying to coax Porter into con- 
versation when he was not in the mood. If a thing 
didn't catch his interest at once, it never did. There 
were no trials over with him. The slightest detail 
would sometimes absorb him and seem to fill him 
with inspiration. And again, a drama would pass 
before him and he would let it go unmarked. I knew 
this. I had seen him coolly ignore Louisa and old 
man Carnot often enough. But I was just goaded 
into persistence. 

"Sally has a face like Diana," I said. 

"When did you meet the goddess, colonel?" Porter 
jested, all at once absorbed in flicking a bit of dust 
from his sleeve. "Convict wool is shoddy enough, 
let alone a convict bundle of mushn." 

A few years later. I saw this very same man go 
into all the honkatonks of New York and no woman 



WITH O. HENRY 203 

was too low to win courtesy from Bill Porter. I 
have seen him treat the veriest old hag with the 
chivalry due a queen. 

His indifference to Sally's plight was singular. 
If he had seen her and talked to her I know it would 
have gripped him to the heart. 

Porter saw that I was bitterly wounded and in the 
petting kind of a way he had he came over to win 
me back. 

" Colonel, please don't be angry with me." You 
misunderstand me. I wasn't thinking much of Sally 
tonight. My mind was far away," he laughed. "It 
was down in Mexico, perhaps, where that indolent, 
luxurious valley of yours is and where we might 
have been happy." 

"Colonel," Porter's face lighted with humorous 
eagerness, "do you think we stand any chance to col- 
lect that $7,000 you paid down on it? I'm a little in 
need of funds." 

Not many could resist the winning magnetism of 
Bill Porter if he chose to make himself agreeable. 
As soon as he had spoken I knew that some secret 
grief was tugging at him. Porter had labored hard 
over some story — Billy Raidler had sent it out in the 
usual way for him. It had come back. He jested 
about it. 

"The average editor," he said, "never knows a fire- 
cracker until he hears the bang of its explosion. 
Those fellows can't tell a story until some one else 
takes the risk of setting it off." 

"They're a damn' bunch of ignoramuses !" Porter 
had read the story to Billy and me and we had sent it 



204 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

off with singing hearts. We were sure the world 
must acknowledge Porter, even as we did. 

"All I'm sorry for is the loss of the stamps, Billy- 
was forced to steal from the State to mail it with. 
It may damage the reputation of the State board of 
the Ohio penitentiary," Porter replied, but he was 
really disappointed. The rejection of his manuscripts 
did not dull the edge of his self-confidence, but filled 
him with forebodings as to his future. 

"I should not like to be a beggar, colonel," he often 
said, "and my pen is the only investment I can make. 
I am continually paying assessments on it. I would 
like to collect a few dividends." 

That same story paid its dividends later. Porter 
revamped it here and there and it made a big hit for 
him. 

"I'U tell you why I'm not interested in Sally," he 
swung back to the subject -wdth a suddenness that 
startled me. "She's better off here than she ever 
could be outside. I know this place is doom — but 
what chance has a girl with Sally's past in the world? 
What are you thinking of, colonel, when you plan to 
send the girl out there to be trampled in the gutter?" 

Sally said almost the same words to me when I 
tried to get her a pardon after I was freed. I went 
back to the pen to see her. 

"Oh, Mr. Jennings!" Her face had grown thin and 
its transparent whiteness made her seem a thing of 
unearthly spirituality. "Don't bother about me. 
I'm lost. You know it. Do you think they would 
ever let me crawl back? You know I'm a bad 
woman." ^ 



WITH O. HENRY 205 

"I had a baby that I didn't have any right to — do 
you think the world ever forgives such a crime as 
that? Leave me alone here. I'm finished. There's 
no pardon on earth for me." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Defiance of Foley the Goat; honesty hounded; O. Henry's scorn; dis- 
ruption of the Recluse Club. 

Sally was right. There was no place for her in 
the outside world. The ex-convict is thrown against 
a social and economic boycott that no courage or per- 
sistence can effectively break. 

We talked about it often — Bill Porter and I. It 
was the topic of eternal interest just as the discus- 
sion of dress is with women. And yet, for Porter, this 
talk about the future was an unalloyed torment. It 
agitated and distressed him. He would come into 
the post-office of an evening and we would gossip 
with fluent merriment. Without prelude, one of us 
would mention a con who had been sent back on 
another jolt. All the whimsical light that usually 
played about his large, handsome face would give 
place to a shadow of heavy gloom. The quick, facile 
tongue would halt its whispering banter. 

Bill Porter, the wag, became Bill Porter, the cynic. 
Fear of the future was like a poisonous serpent that 
had coiled into his heart and lodged there, its fangs 
striking into the core of his happiness. 

"The prison label is worse than the brand of Cain," 
he said many a time. "If the world once sees it, you 
are doomed. It shall not see it on me. I will not 
become an outcast. 



WITH O. HENRY 207 

"The man who tries to hurl himself against the 
tide of humanity is sure to be sucked down in the 
undertow. I am going to swim with the current." 

Porter had less than a year more to serve. He 
was already planning on his re-entrance to the free 
world. For me the question did not then exist. My 
sentence was life. But I felt that Porter's position 
was false. I knew that it would mean an unsheathed 
sword perpetually hanging over his head. The fear 
of exposure saddened and almost tragically hounded 
his life. 

"When I get out, I will bury the name of Bill 
Porter in the depths of oblivion. No one shall 
know that the Ohio penitentiary ever furnished me 
with board and bread. 

"I will not and I could not endure the slanting, 
doubtful scrutiny of ignorant human dogs!" 

Porter was an enigma to me in those days. There 
was no accomiting for his moods. He was the kind- 
est and most tolerant of men and yet he would some- 
times launch into invective against humanity that 
seemed to come from a heart charged with contemp- 
tuous anger for his fellows. I learned to understand 
him later. He liked men ; he loathed their shams. 

The freemasonry of honest worth was the only 
carte blanche to his friendship. Porter would pick 
his companions from the slums as readily as from the 
drawing-rooms. He was an aristocrat in his culture 
and his temperament, but it was an aristocracy that 
paid no tribute to the material credentials of society. 

Money, fine clothes, pose — they could not hood- 
wink him. He could not abide snobbery or insin- 



208 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

cerity. He wanted to meet men and to make friends 
with them — not with their clothes and their bank ac- 
counts. He knew an equal even when hidden 
in rags — and he could scent an inferior underneath 
a wealth of purple and fine linen. 

Porter dealt with the fundamentals in his human 
relations. He went down under the skin. And so 
he scoffed at conventional standards of appraising 
men and women. He belittled the paltry claims 
whereon the shallow minded based their supposed 
prestige. 

"Colonel," he would mock, "I have a proud an- 
cestry. It runs back thousands and thousands of 
years. Do you know, I can trace it clear back to 
Adam! 

"The man I would Hke to meet is the one whose 
family tree does not take its root in the Garden of 
Eden. What an oddity he would have to be — a sort 
of spontaneous creation. 

"And, colonel, if the first families only looked far 
enough back, they would find their poor, miserable 
progenitors blindly! swallowing about in the slime of 
the sea!" 

That any of these descendants of slime should 
dare to look down upon him even in thought was in- 
tolerable. He knew himself to be the equal of all 
men. His fierce, honest independence would brook 
patronage from none. 

"I won't be under an obligation to any one. When 
I get out from here I'll strike free and bold. No one 
shall hold the club of ex-convict over me." 

"Other men have said the same." I felt that Per- 



WITH O. HENRY 209 

ter's attitude lacked courage. "And there is always 
some one to hunt them down. You can't get away 
with it." 

"You can't beat the game if any one ever finds out 
you once were a number," Porter flung back, riled 
and indignant that he was forced to defend himself. 
"The only way to win is to conceal." 

Every day incidents happened to bear out Porter's 
argument. 

Men would be sent out and in a few months they 
were back. The past was their scourge. They could 
not escape its lash. And just a few weeks after we 
had talked about the thing — a few weeks after I had 
told him of Sally — Foley the Goat and the sinister 
tragedy that followed him threw us all into a hot 
fury of resentment and rage. 

Foley's misfortune made a tremendous impression 
on Porter. The incident was directly responsible 
for the breakup of the Recluse Club. 

After Porter was transferred to the steward's of- 
fice, three weeks passed and he had not come to one 
of our Sunday dinners. His absense was as depres- 
sing as a cold rain on a May Day fete. The club 
was lifeless without him. Even Billy Raidler's bub- 
bling raillery simmered down. 

Old man Carnot grew more querrulous when his 
napkin was carelessly folded and Louisa could not 
argue the beginning and the end of Creation. When 
he started in to divide Infinity there was no one to 
oppose him. 

I took Bill's absence as a personal insult. I felt 
that a friend had forgotten me. 



210 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

We were sitting at the table on the fourth Sunday. 
We had a wretched meal. No one had been able to 
bring in the bacon. 

I usually procured the roast. I would take over 
about two dollars in stamps to the guard at the com- 
missary and this State official would open the door 
and allow me to take all that I could carry. 

A new guard had come in. I was afraid to try 
the old tactics on him. Louisa had been equally un- 
fortunate. We had nothing but some leftover pota- 
toes, some canned string beans and stale doughnuts 
for the weekly feast. 

"Where is Mr. Bill?" old Carnot complained. 
"Has the man's promotion inflated his self-esteem? 
By Jove, does he not realize that the name Carnot 
is one of the proudest in New Orleans!" He was 
sputtering and fuming. 

"Mr. Carnot, a name may be your pass-key to the 
domains of the elite," I tried to taunt him. "But 
Bill Porter has an inner circle of his own. He 
doesn't care what your credentials are I" 

I went over to the window and looked across the 
prison campus, hoping that Bill might be coming 
along. I was about to give up when I saw his portly 
figure swinging hurriedly but with calm dignity down 
the alley. 

"Fellow comrades — the prodigal returns and he 
brings the fatted calf with him," Porter's full gray 
eyes gleamed, and he began to empty his pockets. A 
small dray could not have carried much more. There 
were French sardines, deviled ham, green peas, 
canned chicken, jelhes and all manner of delicacies. 



WITH O. HENRY 211 

We looked on as Lazarus might have when an 
extra fat crumb fell from Dives' table. 

It was a joyous reunion. It was the last meeting 
of the Recluse Club. A bitter feud grew up between 
its members. The case of Foley the Goat and Por- 
ter's indignant sympathy brought to its end the one 
pleasant feature of our prison life. 

There are some men who are conquered only by 
death. They will not yield even though life is the 
penalty for rebellion. Men of this type can no more 
survive in prison than a free-thinking private can in 
the army. 

They do not fit in with the crushing discipline of 
penitentiary life. They are marked for a quick fin- 
ish the moment their heads are shaved and their 
chests hung with a number. The man who will not 
bend is broken. It is the inevitable law of prison 
hfe. 

The prison guard will not endure defiance. It 
whips the beast in him to a frenzy. In the Ohio pen 
they had a way of eliminating the unruly. The trip- 
hammer at bolt contract was their neat manner of 
execution. 

Foley the Goat was one of these incorrigibles. 
He was more hateful to the guards than leprosy. 
They sent him to the trip-hammer. The man con- 
signed to that labor is doomed. There is no reprieve 
for him. He cannot endure the terrific grind more 
than three or four months — then he is carted to the 
hospital to rack out a few breaths before going to 
the trough. 

Death was a 'mighty-severe sentence for Foley. 



212 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

His capital sin was his fearless independence. He 
would fling back an angry retort to a guard even 
though he knew that the flesh would be stripped 
from his back in payment. He was consistent in his 
defiance. No one ever heard the Goat send up a yell 
from the basement. It gave him an odd reputation 
in the pen. To the other prisoners he seemed a man 
protected by a sort of witchcraft. 

"He is possessed of the devil," they would whis- 
per in awed admiration. "It ain't in flesh and blood 
to stand it. He's thrown a spell about himself. He 
don't feel!" 

"Sure, he's in cohoots with the Old Fellow," an- 
other would volunteer. "He had ghosts rifling the 
purses of Columbus for him after he cleaned out all 
the pockets in Cincinnati." 

The superstitious believed it, and if ever there was 
a man about whom the mantle of mystery draped it- 
self with a natural grace it was Foley the Goat. He 
was almost unbelievably lean- and hollow-looking 
and his eye was the most compelling and fiery thing 
I had ever looked upon. 

I never will forget the quivering throb of interest 
that caught me the first time I saw that smoldering 
red-brown eye flaming out its defi' at the prison 
guard. 

I had stopped to give an order from the warden. 
A tall, angular, unsubstantial fellow came with nerv- 
ous swiftness toward us. He moved with such ra- 
pidity he seemed to be winging across the grass. The 
breath of an instant that hurried figure paused in its 
ardent walk and the man lashed upon the guard the 



WITH O. HENRY 213 

burning light of his scornful eye. It was uncanny. 
It went over the guard like a malignant curse. 

"Damn' Beanpole!" The guard set his teeth. 
"He'll get his — damn his bewitched eye!" 

"Who is it?" 

"Who? Devil take him — the Goat, of course. He 
murders men with his looks. Who else would dare 
do it? He's got about three months more to live, 
damn him !" 

Foley was the master pickpocket of Ohio. His 
nimble fingers, with their ghostly lightness, had gath- 
ered a fortune. A mean and paltry profession it 
seemed to me until I talked about it to Foley. He 
had as much pride in his "gift" as a musician, or a 
poet, or a train-robber has in his. But Foley's art 
was not in the accepted curriculum. He was sent up 
for two years. 

They had been two years of relentless punishment 
for Foley. He was early initiated into the horrors 
of the basement. The man was neither desperate 
nor vicious but he did not know how to cringe when 
a guard demanded groveling obedience. Foley was 
an indomitable, angry sort. He could not be subdued 
and so he was all but murdered. He came into the 
pen weighing 200 pounds. When I saw him he car- 
ried but 142 pounds on his six-foot frame. 

He had been two months at the trip-hammer when 
his term expired. In the bolt contracts this massive 
instrument was operated by man power. It was a 
cruel and driving job. For 60 days his arms and 
legs had been in almost perpetual motion. The big 
hammers were pedaled by the feet, small ones by the 



214 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

hand. Sixty days had finished the wreck of Foley's 
constitution. 

The end of his term saved him from death. 

He was but a shadow when he came into the war- 
den's office for his discharge. "I'm finished with the 
game," there was no surrender in his intrepid red- 
brown eyes, though his voice was but a hoarse, shock- 
ing whisper and his hands were transparent. 

"I'm done in," he said without a trace of self-pity 
or regret. "I'm going to wind it up peacefully on the 
hill where I was born. I've got a few thousand. 
That'll pay for a funeral. I've had 28 years on this 
planet — that's enough. I'm satisfied — my last 
breath will be a free one!" 

Foley reckoned without Cal Crim. He reckoned 
without the boycott. He forgot that he was ligiti- 
mate prey to be hunted down as soon as his release 
became known. 

And so he went about his home city as though he 
were in truth a free man. At the corner of Fifth 
and Vine streets he discovered his mistake. 

Foley stood there one night, aimless enough to be 
sure. It was but a week or so after his discharge. 
The ex-con was waiting for a little old lady. He 
was going to take her to a vaudeville show. 

The little old creature was his aunt. She had 
raised him. When he came out from the pen she 
took him back to the little house where he was born. 
Tonight they were going on a glorious lark. She 
would be coming along in a few moments. So Foley 
waited. 

A man saw him standing there. He watched and 



WITH O. HENRY 215 

after a while he slouched up from behind and caught 
Foley by the arm. 

"Hello, Goat, when did you get back?" Cal Crim, 
a big rough-neck bull in the Cincinnati department, 
leered at Foley. 

"Hello, Cal," Foley was not suspicious. He had 
kept his resolution. He had neither the wish nor the 
need to steal. "I got back last week." 

"Been to headquarters yet?" Crim tightened his 
clutch on Foley's skeleton arm. 

"Not much. I'm through. I've given up the old 
game." 

"Don't rib me, you damn' thief. I am a wise guy, 
I am. Get along, you sneak," he had Foley by the 
neck and was pushing him forward. "I'll take you 
to headquarters?" 

The Goat knew what that meant. He wouldn't 
have a chance at that last free breath. Once at 
headquarters and conviction was certain. 

"Let go, you skunk, Crim, or I'll kill you!" Foley 
wrenched himself free and turned on the cop. "Don't 
bully me, Crim. You got nothin' on me. Drop your 
damn' hands or I'll finish you." 

Crim was a hulking giant. He swept out his club. 

"Walk along, you thief, or I'll bring this down 
on your lying head!" 

Foley squirmed. There was a crack, a thud and 
a livid welt with the blood bursting through stood out 
on Foley's cheek. Crim yanked him to his feet. 
Foley's terrible eyes glared at him. His lightning 
fingers went to his pockets. An old .44 bulldog 
pistol went against the bull's stomach. Five shots 



216 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

and the fellow crumpled into a nerveless heap at 
Foley's feet. 

There was no vaudeville that night for Foley the 
Goat and his little old aunt. He was nailed. They 
rustled him off to jail and booked him with "Assault 
with attempt to kill." 

I don't know where the five shots went, but Cal 
Crim didn't die. I've hated a bulldog pistol ever 
since. At the hospital he came to and began scream- 
ing in a horrible frenzy — "There's Foley" — that 
shadow — catch it — out with your club, quick — the 
damn* skeleton, he's so thin there's nothing left to 
beat." 

No need to nail Foley. He was finished. He had 
gone out from the pen shrunken to bones — nothing 
but a hoarse choking cough. The cowardly blow 
that came smashing down on his face, knocking his 
rickety body to the ground, took out his last ounce of 
fight. The longest term the court could give Foley 
would be a light sentence. 

When the news hit the pen that Foley was up for 
another jolt, hot suppressed anger, a thousand times 
more resentful because it had no outlet — the futile 
champing fury of chained beasts — went in a mutter- 
ing bitterness from shop to shop. 

Each convict saw in Foley an image of himself. 
His fate represented their future. They looked upon 
this fighting, unruly fellow as the devoted venerate, 
a martyr. 

Men, who longed to "sass" the guards but lacked 
the nerve felt that Foley's reckless temerity redeemed 
their independence. He did what they dared only 



WITH O. HENRY 217 

to imagine. Sometimes I would hear the men re- 
peating one-sided insults from the guards. 

"Damn' scoundrels — just wait till I get out of here 
The bloodhounds, they'll whimper to my lashl" 

Such dreams of vengeance as they cherished. How 
they would get even for all the raw indignities they 
had suffered ! Like dogs they had fawned under the 
scourge. Some day they would be free! Foley's 
doom chilled the hope in every heart. 

We took up a collection for the Goat. Not many 
of us had any spending money. Billy Raidler and I 
contributed 50 cents each in stamps. This was a 
small fortune in the prison. Except for men whose 
families kept them supplied, like Old Carnot and 
Louisa, very few of the prisoners had more than a 
few bits at a time. 

Some gave a nickel, others a dime and some a 
penny. Every cent meant a sacrifice. Men went 
without pie or coffee at night to get their names 
down on Foley's subscription list. 

Billy and I brought the paper over to Old Man 
Carnot. We expected a handsome donation from 
him — a dollar perhaps. 

"My word, Billy, what nonsense is this!" The 
fringe of hair stuck out like a double row of red pins 
around his fat face and his pursy lips sputtered a 
shower at us. "Why, Foley is a common pickpocket! 
He should be in jail. It is most arrant foolishness 
to send a donation to the poor-white trash !" 

"You white-Hvered old reprobate, if I had five 
fingers I'd tear the guts out of you!" 

It was the first time I had ever seen Billy angry. 



218 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

His long, slender body trembled; his face seemed 
suddenly blotched with rage and he leaned against 
me heavily. 

"Damn you, Carnot, you better thank heaven I 
can't spring at you. If I could stand alone, you'd 
hit the hay and never wake up!" 

"Is he serious, Mr. Jennings?" The old fool moved 
back in shocked astonishment. "Does he really wish 
the release of this villainous pickpocket?" 

"Carnot, you're a lying hypocrite. We've got your 
number, all of us. You're a rotten embezzler and 
you stole $2,000,000. You're a blackguard and ev- 
ery cent you own is filthy with the tears and blood of 
white trash. You're a damn' skunk and we wouldn't 
let you give a cent to a real man!" 

If Foley could have seen Carnot's distorted face he 
would have been compensated for the loss of the 
dollar. We went to Louisa. He was busy writing 
out specifications in the contract shop. 

"I'm too busy — it doesn't interest me I" 

That ended it. We didn't give Louisa another 
chance. Neither of us was in the mood for explana- 
tions. 

"Put me down for a dollar! I'll raise my sub- 
scription. I've struck it rich." 

We were in the post-office that evening. Billy's 
income had suddenly jumped. It was an unstable 
account. He kept the nail on his index finger long 
and sharp. He would whiffle it under the edge of 
uncancelled stamps that came on the mail to the 
post-office. Sometimes the revenue went to $5 or $6 
a month. 



WITH O. HENRY 219 

The officials knew of all these practices of ours. 
They knew of the existence of the club, they knew of 
the little thefts whereby men gained enough to buy 
tobacco or candy. But they made no effort to remedy 
conditions. It would have been futile. 

The evils were inherent in a system that compelled 
men to live starved and abnormal lives. There were 
so many graver crimes committed even by the offi- 
cials themselves in order that the prison system be 
maintained I 

Billy had neatly folded off seven stamps — one of 
them was worth 10 cents. 

"Did you ever see such an ugly red sinner as old 
Carnot? I'd rather be lackey to a nigger than God 
to such a sputtering lobster. I'd be glad to roast in 
hell for the pleasure of seeing his fat self-satisfied 
hide on the grid." 

"Hot satisfaction, indeed!" The door was shoved 
gently open and Porter's understanding eyes went 
in amusement over Billy's excited face. 

"Who's damned now?" Profanity was not one of 
Porter's weaknesses. "It is a good vent for the ig- 
norant. It is but a cheap outlet," he would rail at 
me wEen Billy and I would volley out a hot shot of 
"damns" and "by Gods." 

"What joint is now out of socket in this Paradise 
of the Lost?" 

We told him about the subscription for Foley the 
Goat and the refusal of Carnot and Louisa to sub- 
scribe. 

"Pusillanimous, penurious pickpockets that they 
are — dastardly defaulters, who would expect largesse 



220 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

from them? It but increases my respect for bankers 
of your type, colonel." 

Porter gave a dollar to the fund. He had sold 
some story — I do not remember the name, but I 
think it was "Christmas by Injunction." 

"I would have expected better of Louisa." Porter 
had a deep affection for the clever, brilliant thinker. 
"I do not wish to see either of them again. This re- 
fusal to help Foley is too shoddy." 

Money never meant anything to Porter — when he 
had it he spent it freely. He placed no value on it 
except the power it gave him to gratify the thousand 
odd impulses that were the very life of him. 

When Louisa heard of Porter's indignation, he 
sent him a detailed explanation. There were at least 
15 typewritten pages. 

"I have another newspaper from Lizzie." He 
showed us the bulky manuscript. Louisa and Porter 
were given to correspondenc. The ex-banker's let- 
ters were masterpieces. He discussed philosophy, 
science and art in a way that filled Porter with de- 
light. 

"I haven't had time to read it all, but he says he 
did not think. He did not give the matter of Foley 
a second thought. That's the trouble with the world 
— it doesn't think. But the fellow who is starving 
or trampled on is compelled to think. If men would 
investigate the claims of others and their justice, the 
human heart would beat with a kinder throb." 

We did not go over to the club that Sunday. 
Louisa was broken-hearted. Old man Carnot raged 
and fumed. None of us ever bothered with him 



WITH O. HENRY 221 

again. The happy association was ended. With its 
break, a deeper friendship between Porter and my- 
self was cemented. 

We got up $25 for Foley. I wrote a letter of ap- 
preciation extolling his valorous deed in attacking 
the cop. Porter leaned over my shoulder. "Be not 
so exuberant in your praise, colonel. They may come 
in here and get us and hold us 'particeps criminis 
after the act.' I should not like to be branded as a 
murderer and compelled to remain longer even in 
the company of such choice spirits as Billy and your- 
self." 

"You're not exactly in your element here, are you. 
Bill?" 

"As much at home and as comfortable as a fly in a 
spider's embrace." 

"Do you think that society is any better off be- 
cause a few thousand men are put behind bars?" 

"If we could select the right 'few thousand,' society 
would benefit. If we could put in the real scoun- 
drels, I would favor prisons. But we don't. The 
men who kill in legions and who steal in seven figures 
are too magnificent in their criminality to come under 
the paltry observance of law and order. But fellows 
like you — well, you deserved it all right." 

Porter turned the argument off with a laugh. He 
was a good bit of a standpatter even after two years 
and three-quarters in the pen. He did not like to 
discuss prison affairs. His apathy nettled me so 
much that I could never overlook an opportunity to 
goad him. 

"Money and lives are wasted. Just consider the en- 



222 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

ergies that go to the devil in here. Under a better 
plan, prisoners could be punished without being 
damned." 

"Colonel, you're fantastic. What sort of a fourth 
dimension jail would you suggest?" 

"I would not throw men in a hog pen and expect 
them to come out cleaner than they went in. No 
state is rich enough to maintain a breeding place for 
crime and degeneracy. That's what a modern pri- 
son is. 

"Men are cut off from their families; they are 
thrown into shameful and degrading cells, where the 
sanitary conditions would disgust a self-respecting 
pig ; they are compelled to fawn to bullying guards — 
no wonder they come out more like animals than men. 
They are cut off from every decency and refinement 
of life and are expected to come back reformed." 

"The world is very illogical," Porter tilted back 
on the high stool in the post-office, reached up to the 
desk for a magazine and started to read. 

"When you get out you can bring the matter be- 
fore the public. With your gift, you can do wonders 
to break down the system." 

"I shall do nothing of the kind." 

It was Bill's touchy spot. He snapped forward 
on the stool, dropping the magazine on the table. 

"I shall never mention the name of prison. I shall 
never speak of crime and punishments. I tell you 
I will not attempt to bring a remedy to the diseased 
soul of society. I will forget that I ever breathed 
behind these walls." 

I could not understand Porter on this score. I 



WITH O. HENRY 223 

knew that he was neither cold nor selfish, yet he seemed 
almost stoically unconcerned about the horrors that 
went on in prison. He could never bear to hear an 
allusion to Ira Maralatt. He did not want to meet 
Sally and he refused almost with violence to come 
into the chapel to hear her sing. Yet when the per- 
secution of Foley ended in a sordid tragedy, he was 
swept into a scornful fury for the whole infamous 
system responsible for the rank outrage. It was a 
mystery to me. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

0. Henry's rage against corruption; zeal yields to prudence; a draft 
of the grafter's wine. 

"You're right. Prisons are a joke, but the grim 
laugh is on the fellow who gets caught." Bill Porter 
had pushed the door of the post-office open. No greet- 
ing; no amiable raillery; no droll quips. Abruptness 
was a new mood even with this whimsical chameleon. 

"I'm on the edge of the abyss, I'm going to jump 
over." 

I looked at him, amazed at the astounding confes- 
sion. Something unusually shocking and sinister 
must have happened to throw Bill Porter's reticent, 
proud self-possession into open despondency. His 
face was drawn and worried, the usually quiet, ap- 
praising gray eyes were shot through with nervous 
anger and for once the silky yellow hair was frayed 
down over his forehead. 

"Caged beasts are free compared to us. They 
aren't satisfied to stunt our bodies — they damn our 
souls. I'm going to get out." 

Porter let himself slump down on the straightback 
chair and sat regarding me in silence. 

"Al, I ran into a mess today so foul a leper would 
fight shy of it. And they want me to stick my hands 
into it I You were right. The crimes that men are 



WITH O. HENRY 225 

paying for behind these walls are mere foibles com- 
pared to the monstrous corruption of the free men on 
the outside. 

"Why, they walk into the State treasury and fill 
their pockets with the people's gold and walk out 
again and no one even mentions a word of the theft. 
And I'm supposed to put my signature to the in- 
famous steal! Colonel, they'd make you look like a 
pickpocket — the colossal thievery they're going to 
put over!" 

"Whose dopin' out the medicine. Bill? When do 
they tackle the job? I might hold the horses, you 
know, and collect my divvy." Porter tossed his head 
in irritable impatience. "This is tragic. Don't be 
the jester at a funeral. You know that requisition 
for meat and beans you sent over? Do you know 
what happened and what is about to happen?" 

I had a pretty good idea. I had been "wised up" 
to the practice. As secretary to the warden I gave 
the order for all purchases required in the peniten- 
tiary. If the State shop wanted wool, or the bolt con- 
tract needed steel or the butcher shop meat, the lists 
were sent into the warden's office. I sent the requisi- 
tions to the steward and Bill Porter, as his secre- 
tary, was supposed to let out the bids. The mer- 
chant on the outside would then contract to keep us 
supplied for a specified length of time. 

There were certain big business men who solicited 
the prison trade. When the bids were called for, 
these men would send in prices far in excess of the 
market values. The bids were, of course, supposed 
to be secret and the lowest man was presumably 



226 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

given the deal. In practice, however, the letting of 
the bids was an empty formality. 

The state and prison officials had friends. The 
bids would be opened and if the friend had not 
guessed right, he would be tipped off and allowed to 
submit another bid just a fraction less than the low- 
est. He would then send to the pen the most inferior 
products, charging an incredibly exorbitant price. 

The State paid enough to run the prison as a first- 
class hotel. The food it received was so wretched it 
broke down the health and ruined the digestion of 
the most robust. It was the same with every other 
commodity purchased for prison use. 

"Do you know what happened?" Porter repeated. 
There was a grating harshness in the low voice. 
"The bids came in today. The prices were outra- 
geous. I had made a study of the market values. I 
wished to refer the bids back to the contractors and 
demand a fair rate. The suggestion was ignored. 

"That was not the worst of it. The contract was 
not given to the lowest bidder, but to another. He 
was informed of his competitor's figure and allowed 
to underbid it by one cent. It means that the tax- 
payers of this community are deliberately robbed of 
thousands and thousands of dollars on this one con- 
tract alone. And a convict who is here on a charge of 
taking a paltry $5,000, not one cent of which he ever 
got, must be a party to the scandal." 

"You know of these things, Al?" It seemed to 
prick Porter that I was not greatly impressed. 

"Sure, Bill. Here, take a gulp for your misery." 
I poured him a glass of fine old burgundy. "Pretty 



WITH O. PIENRY 227 

good, isn't it? It came from the fellow who got the 
last bean contract. My predecessor left it here for 
me. Like as not we'll be in line now for all manner 
of presents from the thieves whose purses we help 
to line." 

Porter pushed the wine from him. "Do you mean 
to say, Al, that you will wink at such outrageous 
crime? Why, the convicts doing life here are stain- 
less compared to these highwaymen." 

"Bill, you're up against it. You might as well be 
graceful about it. It would be easier for you to tear 
down these stone walls with your naked hand than 
to overthrow the iron masonry of pohtical corrup- 
tion. What can your protest accomplish? The sys- 
tem of legitimate stealing from the government was 
here long before we arrived. It will survive our 
puny opposition. 

"I should prefer then to leave the steward's office. 
I shall hand in my resignation tomorrow." Porter 
got up to leave. He was just rash and impulsive 
enough to do the mad thing. I knew where he would 
end if he did. I didn't like the vision of the well- 
groomed and immaculate Bill heaped into a loath- 
some cell in solitary. Still less did I like the thought 
of him strapped over the trough and beaten to in- 
sensibility. 

"Sit down. Bill, you damn' fool, and listen to rea- 
son." I caught his arm and pulled him back. "The 
government knows these criminals are at large. It 
likes them. It gives them wealth and homage. 
They're the big fellows of the State. They speak at 
all public meetings. They're the pillars of society." 



228 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Porter looked at me with an expression of repulsion. 

"What do you propose to do about it?" I asked. 

"I shall go to the officials of this institution. I 
will tell them I am not a thief, though I am a convict. 
I will defy them to sign up these infamous contracts. 
I will tell them to get another secretary." 

"And the next day you will find yourself back in a 
mean little cell and in a week or so you'll be in solitary 
on a trumped up charge. And then you'll be torn 
up like Ira Maralatt. That's just about what your 
foolhardy honor will bring you." 

A shadow went like a dark red scale over Bill's 
handsome face. He drew in his lips in disgust. 

"By God, that would finish me." 

He stood up, the panther in him ready to spring, 
just as it had leaped once before at the throat of the 
Spanish don. He flung out his hands as though he 
had suddenly found himself covered with odious 
welts from a guard's blows. "I'd wring their damn 
necks dry. Let anyone use me so!" 

"You're nobody in particular except to yourself. 
You might as well look out for that self. Your 
whole future is absolutely ruined if you protest. The 
men you would balk are the biggest bugs in the 
country. They'd grind you right down to the dirt.'* 

Porter sat there as though a sudden chill silence 
had frozen speech in him forever. The nine o'clock 
gong sounded. It was the signal for lights out. He 
started nervously toward the door and then came 
back, laughing bitterly. 

"I thought I would get locked out. But I have 
a midnight key to the steward's office." 



WITH O. HENRY 229 

"Locked out? No such luck, Bill, we're just 
locked in." 

He nodded. "Body and soul." He took up the 
glass of the grafter's wine, held it a moment to the 
light and with one gulp tossed it off. 

It was the end of the struggle. The pulsing, clam- 
orous silence that holds the tongue while thoughts 
shout from mind to mind was between us. Porter 
seemed exhausted by the defeat. The joy in his pro- 
motion was dissipated. He became more aloof than 
ever. 

"What a terrible isolation there is in the prison 
life," he said after a pause that weighed like a stone 
upon us. "We are forgotten by the friends we left 
in the world and we are used by the friends we claim 
here." 

I knew that Porter had a wife and child. I did 
not know then that he had reached his home after our 
separation in Texas to find his wife dying. Nor did 
I know that the $3,000 had given him a measure of 
independence in those last sad months before his trial 
and conviction. 

In all our intimacy at prison. Porter never once al- 
luded to his family affairs. Not once did he speak of 
the child who was ever in his thoughts. Billy and I 
sent out innumerable letters to little Margaret. Only 
once did Porter slip a word. It was that time when 
a story had been refused. He was disappointed, he 
said, for he had wanted to send a present to a little 
friend. 

"We may not be forgotten by the folks on the out- 
side," I offered. 



230 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Forgotten or despised, what difference does it 
make? I left many there. They were powerful. 
They could have won a pardon for me." He looked 
at me with troubled suspense. "Al, do you think I 
am guilty?" 

"No. Bill, I'd bank on you any day." 

"Thanks. I've got one friend anyway. I'm glad 
they let me alone. I do not wish to be indebted to 
anyone. I am the master of my own fate. If I 
bungled my course and got myself here, then all 
right. When I get out I will be under an obligation 
to none." 

Many of those friends would today hold it their 
highest honor to have aided O. Henry when he was 
just Bill Porter the convict. If anyone ever inter- 
ested himself in Bill, he did not seem to know any- 
thing of it. 

"I haven't much longer to stay here, colonel — ^how 
many contracts do you suppose there'll be to give 
out?" 

"Oh, quite a few. Why?" 

"There might be some way of escape for us." 

"Yes, your way out is to feather your own nest 
and keep your trap shut. Take another swig." 

After that there were many glasses of wine — ^many 
fingers of whiskey — many long conversations after 
the nine o'clock lights were out. Porter gave in, van- 
quished, but the surrender nagged at him Hke an 
ugly worm biting incessantly at his heart. He tried 
to keep the bids secret ; he fought to give the contract 
to the lowest man. He would be asked to show the 
bids. He was a mere piece of furniture in the 



WITH O. HENRY 281 

office. He had to do as he was told and without 
question. 

"The dirty scoundrels," he would say to me. 

"Pay no attention to it," I would advise. "Hon- 
esty is not the best policy in prison. Don't let it 
worry you." 

"Of course I will not worry over it. We are noth- 
ing but slaves to their roguery." 

Even so. Porter and I had tremendous power in 
letting out the contracts. The wealthy thieves, who 
profited at the expense of the State and two helpless 
convicts, sent us cases of the choicest wines. They 
sent us cigars and canned delicacies, as tokens of 
their esteem. We kept the contraband in the post- 
office and many a stolen feast, Billy and Porter and 
I enjoyed. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Tainted meat; O. Henry's morbid curiosity; his interview with the Kid 

on the eve of execution; the Kid's story; the death scene; 

innocence of the Kid. 

I had nothing to do with the letting of the con- 
tracts, but the acceptance of the supplies was within 
the province of the warden's office. I knew the hor- 
rible starvation forced on the men in the main dining- 
room. The memory of my first meal there with the 
maggots floating in the stew gravy and the flies 
drowned in the molasses filled me with nausea every 
time I passed the kitchen. 

I made up my mind for one thing ... if tower- 
ing prices were paid for meat, I would at least insist 
that the supply brought to the prison be wholesome. 

"You can do that," Porter said. "The warden 
will bear you out on it. We can have that much 
satisfaction anyway." 

When the first consignment came under the new 
contract, I went down to look at it. Prepared as I 
was for cheap substitutes, I was not ready for the 
shocking spectacle before me as the rotten stuff was 
shouldered out of the wagon. 

"Put it back," I yelled. Breathless and fighting 
mad I reached the warden's office. 

"They're unloading a lot of stinking, tainted meat 
down at the butcher shop. Flies wouldn't crawl in 



WITH O. HENRY 233 

it, it's so rotten. It's an outrage. We've paid for 
prime roast beef. We've given the highest price ever 
quoted on the face of the earth for meat and they've 
brought us in a load of carrion. What shall I do 
about it?" 

The warden turned a white, startled face toward 
me. 

''What's this, what's this?" His voice sounded 
seared and faint to me. He started pacing the floor. 
- "It's a shame warden, the men are being starved. 
The beans are so old and withered and only famished 
men would besmirch themselves with that meat. We 
could at least require common wholesomeness." 

"That's right, yes, that's right. You say the meat 
is absolutely tainted? Send it back. Write to them 
and tell them we demand good fare." 

I made the letter strong enough to ring true. I 
informed the wholesalers that the Ohio penitentiary 
paid first-class prices. It demanded first-class pro- 
duce. The meat we got after that was coarse, but it 
was fresh and clean. 

I used this one authorization from the warden 
again and again to send back stuff. The contractors 
came to realize that the prison was no longer a gar- 
bage can for their spoiled supplies. They found it 
cheaper to send in a medium grade in the beginning. 

"You've come to see there are worse things in the 
world. Bill, than an ex-convict," I suggested to Por- 
ter when I told him about the tainted meat. "When 
you get out will you brazen out their prejudice or 
will you keep to your old resolution?" 

Porter had about four months more to serve. We 



234 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

kept a calendar and every night we would strike off 
another day. It is a melancholy thing to feel the 
separation coming daily nearer — a separation that 
will be as final and uncompromising as death. We 
talked indifferently, almost flippantly at this time 
because we were so deeply touched. 

"I have not changed. I will keep my word. What 
would you do, colonel, if you should get out?" 

"I will walk up to the first man I see on the street 
and I will say to him. 'I'm an ex-con — just got out 
of the pen. If you don't like it, go to hell." (I did 
that very thing some years later.) 

Porter burst out laughing. It was the first time 
I had ever heard him laugh outright. It seemed to 
come bubbling and singing up from his throat like a 
rich, sonorous tune. 

"I would give a great deal for your arrogant inde- 
pendence. I wonder if I will regret my plan?" 

I don't believe he ever did, even on the black day 
in New York when he all but admitted he could en- 
dure the suspense no longer. 

"Is the fear of life greater than the fear of death, 
Al? Here I am ready to leave this pen and I am 
beset with anxieties lest the world may guess my 
past." 

Porter didn't expect any answer to his question. 
He was in a sort of ruminating mood, liking to speak 
his thoughts aloud. 

"How hard we work to make a mask to hide the 
real self from our fellows. You know I sometimes 
think the world would go forward at a lightning pace 
if men would meet each other as they are — if they 



WITH O. HENRY 235 

could, even for a short time, put aside pose and 
hypocrisy. 

"Colonel, the wiseacres pray to see themselves as 
others see them. I would pray rather that others 
might see us as we see ourselves. How much of 
hatred and contempt would melt in that clear stream 
of understanding. We could be equal to life if we 
tried hard enough. Do you think we could ever look 
into the face of death without a tremor?" 

"I have seen men take a bullet and laugh with their 
last gasp. I have hidden out with the gang and every 
hide of us knew we were probably on our last stretch. 
None of us were squeamish about it." 

"But there was uncertainty to give you hope. I 
am thinking of death that is as certain, say, as my 
release. Take, for instance, a condemned man — you 
know they are lashed with hideous nightmares. You 
have seen some of them die. Did any go fearlessly?" 

"I don't mean gameness or bravado, but downright 
absence of alarm. Did any one of them seem to 
grin in the teeth of death as though they were about 
to enter upon a sort of adventure?" 

"Bill, you speak now of the fellows who pay for 
the drinks at their own funeral. The jailbird ain't 
that kind of an animal." 

"I would like to talk to a man who looked at death. 
I would like to know what his sensations might be." 

"I wonder if that's the reason Christ called Laza- 
rus back — sort of wanted to know what the big jump 
might be like?" 

It occurred to me that Porter was writing a story 
and wanted to daub the color on true. He never 



236 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

stuck to facts, but he went to no end of pains to set 
up his scenery aright. 

"I can't produce a Lazarus to gratify your curi- 
osity, but there's a fellow due to be bumped off in a 
week or so. You come over tomorrow and I'll knock 
you down to the near stiff." 

"What is he hke?" Bill seemed all of a sudden 
to weaken and his fluent whispering became hesitant 
and uncertain. 

"Don't know. But he'll sit in the chair in about 
ten days. He sent another fellow over the great 
divide some months ago. He says it's a lie and he's 
innocent just like a babe, you know." 

There's nothing very esthetic in the prison soul. 
Men laugh and jest over death. For weeks we would 
know when the electric chair was due for a sitting. 
We would watch the condemned man walking in the 
yard with a special guard before he was finally locked 
up in the death cell and fattened for the slaughter. 

"I'd change places, them, I'd die for 

the pleasure of gorging myself with a week of square 
meals." Many a time I have heard raw-boned, hun- 
gry-eyed men in the ranges and shops fling out the 
challenge. 

But as the day for the official murder draws near, 
the whole place seems overhung with mournful gray 
shadows. One can almost feel it in the corridors — 
the cold, clammy atmosphere of the death-day. It is 
as though drowned people with wet hair clinging 
about their dead faces went drooping up and down 
reaching out chilly fingers and putting their icy touch 
on each man's heart. 



WITH O. HENRY 237 

We never talked on those days but often in the 
night, screams, long, frightful and sobbing — screams 
that trailed into broken agonized moans would split 
the air waking us with creeping foreboding. Some 
overwrought wretch whose dream tormented him had 
seen the death in his sleep. 

There was that grewsome hubbub about the prison 
now for the Kid was going to be bumped off. They 
were extra busy in the electrical department — it takes 
plenty of juice to kill the condemned. 

Porter came over to the campus to talk to the man 
who faced death. "There he is, the soft-looking fel- 
low walking with the guard — She'll let you talk to 
him." 

When a man has but seven or eight days of life 
they give him a few privileges even in a prison. They 
let him take a turn in the yard — they give him roast 
beef and chicken to eat. They let him read and write, 
and sometimes they let him keep his light all night. 
Darkness is such a dread magnifier of terrors. 

Porter went over to talk to the Kid. The three 
men fell in together and walked up and down for 
about five or ten minutes. The condemned man put 
a hand on Bill's arm and seemed childishly pleased 
to have such company. 

When Porter came back to me, his face was a sick- 
ish yellow and his short, plump hands were closed 
so tight the nails gored his flesh. He rushed into the 
post-office, sat down on a chair and wiped his face. 
The sweat stood out like heavy white pearls. 

"Guess you got the scare, all right. Bill? Get a 
close enough squint at the old Scythe Dancer?" He 



238 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

looked as though he might have seen an unholy ghost. 

"Al, go out and talk to the boy. Be quick. This 
is too monstrous. I thought he was a man. He is 
but a child. He has no fear. He can't seem to rea- 
lize that they mean to kill him. He hasn't looked at 
death. He's too young. Something should be done 
about it." 

I had not talked to the fellow. I knew he was up 
for murder. I thought he was about 25. 

"Colonel, did you see the way he put his hand on 
my arm? Why he's only a little, ignorant fellow — 
he's just 17. He says he didn't do it. He's sure 
something will happen to save him. 

"Good God, colonel, can a man believe any good 
of the world when cold-blooded murders like this are 
dehberately perpetrated? The lad may be innocent. 
AI — ^he has gentle, blue eyes — I've seen eyes like 
them in a little friend of mine. It's a damn' shame 
to murder him." 

As the warden's secretary I had to attend and 
make a record of the executions. A soft youngster 
of 17 would make an ugly job for me. 

I knew the facts in this case. The evidence was 
strong against the Kid. He and a boy friend had 
gone down to the Scioto river one Sunday afternoon 
to take a swim. 

The Kid came back alone — the other boy was miss- 
ing. Three weeks later a body was found in the 
mud far down the river. It was decomposed beyond 
the possibility of recognition. The face had been 
eaten away. 

The parents of the missing boy had been haunt- 



WITH O. HENRY 239 

ing the morgue. They looked at the remains, fomid 
a birthmark on the decomposed body and estabhshed 
the identity of their son. The Kid was arrested. 
Witnesses clamored into the courtroom. They had 
seen two boys on the Scioto and the Kid was pointed 
out as one of them. 

The boys had been quarreling. Suddenly the Kid 
had grabbed his companion by the arm, dragged him 
down to the river, shouting: "I'll drown you for 
this!" Two men and a woman had heard the threat. 
The Kid was condemned on their circtmistantial evi- 
dence. 

"Yes, sir, that's true." The youngster looked at me 
with his gentle eyes and put his hand on my arm as 
he had on Porter's. 

"Thet's true, all right— but thet ain't all." 

The Kid kept his hold on me as though he feared 
I might leave before he had a chance to speak. It 
was pathetic — his eagerness for company. We walked 
up and down in the sun and he looked at the sky and 
at the top of a tree whose branches reached over the 
wall. He said he wasn't afraid and there was no 
resentment in his expression — ^just gratitude for the 
pleasure of talking, it seemed. 

"Yer see, Mr. Al, me and Bob Whitney went down 
to the river thet Sunday and we got to foolin' and 
wrestlin' 'round there and we wasn't mad et all, but 
maybe we looked like we was. He thro wed me down 
and landed on top er me and I jumped up and yells 
that to him. 

"I sed, 'I'll drown yer for this,' and I pulled him 
up and we bumped each other down to the water. 



240 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

They was people there and they heard it, but we was 
only foolin'. 

"I had to git back to work and I left Bob there 
and I never seed him again. And after a while thet 
body was washed up and they sed it was Bob and 
thet I drowned him and they tuk me into court and I 
got all twisted up. 

"I told them it was all jest funnin' and I sed Bob 
was swimmin' 'round when I left, but they looked at 
me like I was lyin' and the judge sed, 'I sentence 
yer to die or somethin' like thet — 

"But death don't skeer me — " 

All the time he talked the Kid kept his rough, 
freckled hand on my arm. It sent a chill, creepy sensa- 
tion up to my shoulder and across my neck. I never 
saw softer, kinder eyes than those that ignorant, un- 
developed boy of 17 turned so persistently at me. 
The more he talked the harder it became to picture 
him walking to the electric chair. 

I felt weak and sick at the thought of taking notes 
on this Kid's death agony. The sun was warm and 
gentle that day, and the Kid stood there as if he liked 
it and he kept looking up at the tree and then at me. 
He had such a boyish jaw and chin and a kind of 
likable pug nose that had nothing malicious about it — 
he didn't look like a murderer. 

I could hardly imagine him capable even of anger. 
He seemed to grow younger with almost every sen- 
tence he uttered. 

"Jest look et thet tree — ain't it a shinnin', though? 
We had a tree like thet in our back yard once when 
I was a kid. I ain't gonna show no yeller streak. 



WITH O. HENRY 241 

I ain't skeered to die. When I was a kid I had a li'l 
sister. I sold newspapers and uster come in late. We 
was all alone 'ceptin' for a old stepmother. 

"Li'l Emmy uster creep up ter me and say, 
'Aintcha skeered, Jim, to be out so late? Didjer bring 
me a cookie?' We uster have fine times eaten' the 
cakes. 

"Then li'l Emmy got sick and the old hag — that's 
all we ever called her — beat her, and I got mad and 
we sneaked away and lived in a basement, and we 
was awful happy, 'cept thet li'l Emmy was skeered 
of everything. 

"She was a-skeered to go out, a-skeered to stay 
home and she uster f oiler me 'round while I sold 
the papers. 'Bout 10 o'clock we'd go home. She'd 
hug on to my arm and whisper. 'You ain't skeered o' 
nuthin, are yer, Jim?' We treated ourselves to cookies 
and Emmy made coffee and we did jest whatever we 
wanted to. 

"Then Emmy got sick agin and she died. She had 
li'l white hands, and one finger got chopped off 'n her 
right hand when she was a baby. And the last thing 
she did 'fore she died — she put out her hands to me 
and she sed: 

" 'Jim, you ain't skeered o' nuthin', are you? You 
ain't skeered to die?' 

"And I ain't. I'm gonna walk right up ter thet 
chair same's it was a plush sofa 'fore a big fire." 

It was an obsession with him. 

"I've got a pass for you to see the Kid die," I said 
to Porter the night before the execution. 

He looked at me as though I were a cannibal in- 



242 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

viting him to partake of the flesh of some human 
baby. He started up as though jerked by an electric 
shock. 

"Is that going through? My God, what a den of 
depraved fiends this prison is ! I'd rather see the only 
thing I have on this earth dead at my feet than watch 
the deliberate killing of the poor 'softy.' Excuse me, 
colonel." Porter took up his hat and walked out of 
the post-office. "I want to live a few weeks after I get 
out of here." 

I would like to have changed places with Bill. 
Death hadn't any terrors for me — the elaborate cere- 
mony they made of their murders. But I had to be 
in the death cell when the kid was bumped off. He 
came in between two guards. The chaplain walked 
behind him, reading in a chanting rumble from an 
open Bible. The Kid lopped in as though he had lost 
control of his muscles; he appeared so loose limbed 
and soft, and his pug nose stuck up, it seemed, more 
than ever. 

His gentle eyes were wide-open, glazed and terror- 
stricken. His boyish face was ashen and his chin 
shook so, I could hear his teeth knocking together. 
The guard poured out a big glass of whiskey and 
handed it to him. 

It was a little custom they had to brace a man for 
the last jolt. 

The Kid pushed the glass from him, spilling the 
liquor on the floor. He shook his head, his chin sagging 
down and quivering. 

"I don't need nutin', thanks." His face was blood- 
less as flour, and the frightened eyes darted from the 



WITH O. HENRY 243 

chair to the warden. He caught sight of me. I never 
felt so like a beast — so like an actor at a foul orgy — 
in all my life. 

"Oh, Mr. Al — good mornin', mornin'." His head 
kept bobbing at me, so that I could see the big round 
spot on the crown where they had shaved the hair 
clean. One of the electrodes would be fastened on 
that shiny patch. 

"Mornin', Mr. Al, I ain't skeered — ^what'd I tell 
you? I ain't skeered o' nuthin'." 

The Kid's suit had been slit up the back seam so 
that the voltage could be shot through his body. He 
was led up to the chair, his shoulders and his elbows 
tied to its arms and the straps adjusted. The elec- 
trodes were placed against the bare calves of his legs 
and at the base of his brain. 

It didn't take very long to make the complete ad- 
justment, but to me it seemed that the ignoble affair 
would never be done with. When he was finally 
strapped down, the boy seemed about to collapse as 
though his bones had suddenly become jelly, but he 
was compelled to sit upright. 

Warden Darby stepped up to the boy and called 
him by name. 

"Confess, Kid," the warden's breath chugged out 
like a laboring engine's. "Just admit what you did 
and I'll save you. I'll get you a pardon." 

The Kid sat staring at him and muttering to him- 
self, "I ain't skeered, I tell yer." 

"Confess, Kid," Darby yelled at him, "and I'll let 
you out." 

The Kid heard at last. He tried to answer. His 



244 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

lips moved, but none of us could hear his words. At 
last the sound came: 

"I ain't guilty. I never killed him." 

The warden threw on the lever. A blue flame 
darted about the Kid's face, singeing his hair and 
making the features stand out as though framed in 
lightning. The tremendous voltage threw the body 
into contortions, just as a piece of barbed wire 
vibrates out when it is suddenly cut from a fence. As 
the current went through him there came a little 
squeak from his lips. The lever was thrown off. The 
Kid was dead. 

For a long time that night neither Porter nor I 
said a word. The whole prison seemed to be pressed 
down with an abject and sodden misery. The cons 
missed the Kid from the patch of sunlight in the yard. 
They knew he had been bumped off. 

"Colonel, have you any special hope as regards 
heaven?" Porter had a glass of Tipo half raised to 
his lips. The grafters had sent us a new case of costly 
wines. 

"Give me a swallow of that, Bill! it must have a 
wonderful kick in it — ^up to heaven in two gulps!" 
Porter ignored me. It was not a night for jest. 

"I am not speaking of a churchly paradise, but 
what, Al, is your idea of a state of perfect bliss?" 

"At present. Bill, a dugout way off in the wilder- 
ness, where I would never again see the faces of men. 
I would want plenty of cattle and horses, but no trace 
of the human kind except perhaps a few of their books." 

"No, the books would spoil it. Don't you realize, 
colonel, that the serpent who wrecked the first para- 



WITH O. HENRY 245 

disc was Thought? Adam and Eve and all their un- 
fortunate descendants might still be lolling in joyous 
ignorance on the banks of the Euphrates if Eve hadn't 
been stung with the desire to know. It's quite a 
feather in a woman's cap. Mother Eve was the first 
rebel — the first thinker." 

Porter seemed impressed with his own brilliance. 
He nodded his head to emphasize his conviction. 
"Yes, colonel," he continued, "thought is the great 
curse. Often when I was out on the Texas ranges I 
envied the sheep grazing on the mesa. They are sup- 
erior to men. They have no meditations, no regrets, 
no memories." 

"You're wrong. Bill, the sheep are more intelligent 
than men. They mind their own business. They do 
not take upon themselves the powers which belong 
to Nature, or Providence, or whatever you wish to 
call it." 

"That's exactly what I finished saying. They do 
not think; therefore they are happy." 

"How stupid you are tonight. Bill. You might just 
as well go into ecstasy over the joys of non-existence. 
If thought makes us wretched, it is also thought that 
gives us our highest delight." 

"Certainly, if I did not think, I would be serenely 
contented tonight. I should not be dragged down 
with a ton weight of futile anger." 

"And if you did not think, you would likewise be 
incapable of intense pleasures." 

"I have yet to find in thought, Al, this beneficent 
aspect. I persist — Thought is a curse. It is responsi- 
ble for all the viciousness found in the human family; 



246 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

for depravities that are the monopoly of the lofty 
human species. 

"Colonel — the Kid's execution is but one example 
of the viciousness of Thought. Men think a thing is 
and they conclude that it must be so. It is a sort of 
hypnotism." 

Porter was never yet coherent in his philosophical 
pickings. He would begin with a whimsical absurdity 
and he would use this as a kind of string for his 
fancies. 

He would pick up a thought here, an oddity there 
and run them all together. The finished necklace was 
like those chains of queerly sorted charms made by 
squaw women. 

*'A1," he turned to me with indolent deliberation, 
attempting to conceal the anxiety in his mind, "was 
he guilty?" 

It was the thought tormenting me at that very 
moment. Neither of us had been thinking of another 
thing all evening. 

"Colonel, the horror of this day has made an old 
man of me. Every hour I could feel that softy's 
freckled hand on my arm. I could see his gentle eyes 
smiling into mine. I believe him. I think he was 
innocent. Do you? 

"You have seen many face death. A man might 
persist in a lie. But would a boy like that — a child 
keep at it so?" 

"Nearly every man who has not pleaded guilty 
insists on his innocence to his last breath. I don't 
know about the Kid. He may have been speaking the 
truth. I felt that he was innocent." 



WITH O. HENRY 247 

"Good God, Al— What a frightful thing if they 
have murdered a boy and he was not guilty! The 
terrible insolence of men to convict on circumstantial 
evidence! Does it not prove the conceit of Thought? 

"There can be no certainty to second-hand evidence 
— what right have we then to inflict an irrevocable 
penalty? The evidence may be disproved; the charges 
may be withdrawn, but the condemned may not be 
summoned back from the grave. It is monstrous. 
The arrogance of human beings must tempt the 
patience of God. 

"I am right, colonel, for all your opposition, 
thought not poised with humility, is but a goad lashing 
man's conceit to madness or at the other extreme we 
have thought unblended with faith — then it is but a 
bludgeon striking man's yearnings down to despond- 
ency." 

Abruptly he came over to me. He had picked up 
another bead for his fantastic chain. 

"Was there ever a case in this pen when a man was 
electrocuted and it was afterward found that he was 
innocent?" 

"Not in my time. Bill. But they tell of several. 
The old stir bugs could freeze the marrow in your 
bones with their tales." 

"Some of them must be true. It is inconceivable 
that man's judgment should always be correct. The 
fact that one man has been cut off from life on evil 
evidence is sufficient indictment against the whole sys- 
tem of murder on circumstantial proof. How can 
men sit on a jury and take into their hands such 
wicked power?" 



248 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Several hours before the 9 o'clock gong had sounded 
there was a thick hush over the sleeping institution. 
Porter's whispering eloquence had lulled into quiet. 
Our uneasy pangs were well diluted inTipo and into 
our harried minds there had drifted a half-dozing con- 
tentment. Suddenly a hoarse, rumbling growl that 
lifted into a piercing shriek came rasping out from 
the cell block. 

Porter leaped to his feet. 

"What was that? I was dreaming. It sounded like 
the crack of doom to me. This infernal place is 
haunted. I wonder if the Kid's spirit rests easily 
tonight? Colonel, do you believe in spirits, in an after 
life, in a God?" 

"No, I don't — ^leastwise, I don't think I do." 

"Well, I do in a way, I think there is some kind 
of an all-powerful spirit, but the God of humanity 
doesn't loiter in this pen. He doesn't seem to be a 
student of criminology. 

"If I thought much about this ajffair of today I 
would lose all faith, all happiness. I would never be 
able to write a hopeful line." 

It was well for Porter that his release was due in 
a short time. The world could not afford to miss the 
buoyancy of his faith. 

He was not in the prison when the shocking truth 
came out. The Press Post carried the story, bringing 
out again all the facts in the case. Bob Whitney, the 
boy whose body was supposed to have been washed up 
from the Scioto, turned up In Portsmouth. He wrote 



WITH O. HENRY 249 

to his parents. He knew nothing about the Kid's 
execution. 

The State had made a little mistake. It had bumped 
off a boy of 17 for a murder that was never committed. 
It had thought the Kid was guilty. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Last days of 0. Henry in prison; intimate details; his going away outfit; 
goodbys; his departure. 

The last leaf on the calendar was turned. Porter 
had but seven days more to serve. Even Billy grew 
quiet. When Porter came to the post-office, we would 
wait on him, yielding him the only comfortable chair, 
kicking a foot-stool under his feet. And once Billy 
grabbed up a pillow from his cot and stuffed it under 
Porter's head. Porter stretched his ample body and 
turned on Billy a cherubic smile. 

"Gee, Bill, I ain't a gonna die, am I? Feel my 
pulse." 

It was like that — funny — ^but under the burlesque 
was the disturbing sadness of farewell. We were full 
of idiotic consideration for Porter as people are when 
they feel that a friend is leaving them forever. 

We were packing a suitcase of memories for him 
to carry along into the open world, hoping he might 
turn to it now and again with a thought for the two 
cons left in the prison post-office. 

Goodbys are almost always one-sided, as though 
fate offered a toast — and the one who goes drinks off 
the wine and hands the glass with the dregs to the 
one who stays behind. 

A twinge of regret Porter felt in the parting, per- 
haps, but it sent only a tremendous quiver through the 



WITH O. HENRY 251 

buoyant swell of his joy in the thought of freedom. 
He was excited and full of a nervous gaiety. His 
whispering, hesitant voice took on a chirp and his 
serene face was jaunty with happiness. 

"Colonel, I want you to do me a favor. I don't 
mind an obligation to you. I'll never pay it back and 
you won't hold it against me. You see, Al, I'm 
worried. I don't want to get arrested for running 
around unclad. And that's what might happen if you 
don't lend your valuable aid. 

"It's this way. The stuff they make the going- 
away suits with goes away too quickly. It melts in 
the sun and if it should rain it dissolves. A man has 
no protection nohow. 

"Now, when I came to this institution I brought 
a fine tweed suit with me. I'd like it back as a sort 
of dowry. Will you look it up for me, please? I do 
not admire prison gray. I'm afraid it is not a fashion- 
able color this summer." 

The large, humorous mouth — the one feature that 
was a bit weak — grinned. Porter buttoned his coat 
and surveyed himself sideways with the air of a dandy. 
A sheepish light stole into his eye. 

"I feel like a bride getting a trousseau. I'm so 
particular about the sendoff this paternal roof is going 
to give me." 

Porter's old suit had been given away to some other 
out-going convict. 

"Use your influence, colonel, and get me a good- 
looking business suit. I'll leave it to your judgment, 
but pick me out a rich brown." 

The superintendents of all the shops knew the secre- 



252 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

tary of the steward's office. They were all fond of 
the nimble-tongued, amiable dignity that was Bill 
Porter's. Everyone wanted to make him a present as 
he was leaving. 

"Porter goin' on his honeymoon? Sure pick out 
the best we've got. Harry Ogle was the outside super- 
intendent of the State shop. He led me over to the 
storeroom and pulled down bolt after bolt of fine 
wool cloth. 

The regulation convict suit was made of some cotton 
mixture. The government paid the state $25 to clothe 
its outgoing prisoners. The raiment was worth about 
$4.50. 

"Here's the finest piece of brown English worsted 
in the State of Ohio." We decided on that and Porter 
came over for a fitting. The men laughed as they 
measured him. 

"Want the seams runnin' crostwise just to be other- 
wise," they twitted. "If you had the pockets turned 
upside down, they'd never git wise to where this hand- 
some suit come from. And you ain't got nuthin' to 
put in the pockets, anyways, and you'd be sure not to 
come back as a sneak thief." 

It would have hurt Porter's pride at another time, 
but he was so concerned with the multitude of small 
preparations he laughed and bandied back the crude 
jests of the prison tailors. In return they fashioned 
a suit that was without fault, even to Porter's 
fastidious taste. 

On the night of July 23 — the next morning he was 
to leave — Porter smuggled over his outfit. 

"Gentlemen, whenever a great drama is to be 



WITH O. HENRY 253 

staged, it is customary to give a dress rehearsal. Let 
the curtain up." 

Bill tried on the suit. He had a black Katy hat 
like the derby worn today and a pair of shoes made 
by a life termer. Prison shoes squeak. They can be 
heard a mile off. The cons used to say it was due on 
purpose to prevent a silent getaway. Porter's were 
no exception. 

"I'll make quite a noise in the world, colonel. I*m 
bringing my own brass band along." 

"You're bound to make a noise there, Bill." 

"Here, try some of this hair tonic on them." Billy 
got down Porter's remedy. "It can take the kick out 
of anything." 

Flippant, meaningless banter — we spent the 
precious hours flipping it back and forth. It was like 
the empty foam tossed from great waves against an 
impregnable rock. The waves themselves come with 
a mighty rush, but at the base of the crag they ebb 
as though their force were suddenly spent. 

Thoughts and a hundred anxious questions were 
pushing upward in a surge of emotions, but at the 
tongue they failed and we dashed out this froth. We 
talked of everything but our thoughts. 

Even the warden was nervous when Porter came 
into the office for his discharge. 

"I worked them all night, colonel," Porter pointed 
to the shoes. "Their eloquence is irrepressible." 

"If you looked any better. Bill, the ladies would 
kidnap you for a Beau Brummel." 

"I shall not be taken into captivity again on any 
charge." 



254 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Porter's face was slightly lined. He looked older 
for his 39 months in prison, but even so, his 
was a head and a bearing to attract attention any- 
where. There was about him now an attitude of con- 
fidence, or self-sufficiency, of dignity. He looked more 
like a well-educated, cultured business man than like 
an ex-convict. 

There were visitors in the outer office. The warden 
stepped outside, telling me to give Bill his discharge 
papers. As soon as we were alone the intense strain 
became unbearable. I wanted to cram everything 
into those last moments. I wanted to say: "Good 
luck — God bless you — Go to hell." 

But neither of us spoke. Bill went over to the win- 
dow and I sat down to the desk. For 10 minutes 
he stood there. Suddenly it occurred to me that he 
was taking this parting in a very indifferent manner. 

"Bill," my voice was husky with resentment and he 
turned quickly; "won't you be outside soon enough? 
Can't you look this way for the last few minutes we've 
got?" 

The coaxing smile on his lips, he put out his strong, 
short hand to me. "Al, here's a book, I sent to town 
for it for you." It was a copy of "Omar Khayyam." 
I handed him the discharge and his $5. Porter had 
at least $60 or $70 — the proceeds from his last story. 
He took the $5. 

"Here, colonel, give this to Billy — ^he can buy alco- 
hol for his locomotor ataxia." 

That was all. He went toward the door and then 
he came back the old drollery in his eye. 

"I'll meet you in New York, colonel. You might 



WITH O. HENRY 255 

beat the brakes there before me. I'll be on the watch. 
Goodby, Al." 

Porter's voice lapsed into a low whisper at the end. 
He went to the door, and, without looking back, went 
out. I felt as though something young and bonny — 
something lovable and magnetic — was gone forever. 

"No leaves on the calendar, Al!" Billy Raidler 
scratched off the last number, shook his head and 
tore off the page. He looked over at me through a 
gloom of silence. 

"Another day gone into night." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

O. Henry's silence; a letter at last; the proposed story; Mark Hanna 
visits the prison; pardon; double-crossed; freedom. 

Egotism is the bridge whereon men have crawled 
upward from the jungle. There is no limit to its 
reaches. It spans even the heavens, paving the way to 
gods and angels, whose sole delight is to minister to 
men. It is not stopped even at the grave, but flings 
a tight rope beyond, and on this hair line Man marches 
to Immortality. Without Egotism, the human animal 
never would have developed. 

Across one chasm it does not stretch — the chasm 
between the World and Prison. And in this exile the 
convict becomes spiritless and hopeless. He expects 
nothing, for he has lost the self-esteem that buoys 
trust. 

When Bill Porter went down the walk to the Open 
Road in his squeaky shoes and the arrogant yellow 
gloves Steve Bussel had given him, neither Billy 
Raidler nor I ever expected to catch again an echo 
from those familiar footsteps. He had sauntered out 
of our lives. We were glad for the sunny companion- 
ship he had given us when he was one with our- 
selves. 

We talked about him now and then, Billy always 
brought up the conversation. 



WITH O. HENRY 257 

"I need some tobacco — a special brand — think I'll 
drop a line to Bill Porter and ask him to send it on." 
Or again, it was his hair that worried him. "Fool that 
I was — I forgot to get that remedy from Bill. I'm 
like to be bald before he sends his address. Say, Al, 
didn't he promise to give you a lift on the story — 
what about it?" 

But the weeks went by and no word came. A 
month and a half to the day Billy sent a runner to 
the warden's office with a letter postmarked "Pitts- 
burgh." The runner brought a note from Raidler: 
^'Al, send me back that letter. My locomotor ataxia 
is itchin' to see what Bill's got to say. Yours in great 
peril, Billy." 

Here is the first letter Bill Porter — ^he had already 
taken the name of O. Henry — ^had sent to me at the 
Ohio penitentiary. He had not forgotten us and he 
had already made good : 

"Dear Jennings: I have intended to write to you 
and Billy every week since I left, but kept postponing 
it because I expected to move on to Washington 
(sounds like Stonewall Jackson talk, doesn't it?) 
almost any time. I am very comfortably situated here, 
but expect to leave in a couple of weeks, anyhow. 

"I have been doing quite a deal of business with 
the editors since I got down to work and have made 
more than I could at any other business. I want to 
say that Pittsburgh is the 'low-downedest' hole on 
the surface of the earth. The people here are the most 
ignorant, ill-bred, contemptible, boorish, degraded, 
insulting, sordid, vile, foul-mouthed, indecent, pro- 
fane, drunken, dirty, mean, depraved curs that I ever 



258 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

imagined could exist. Columbus people are models 
of chivalry compared with them. I shall linger here 
no longer than necessary. 

"Besides, on general principles, I have a special 
object in writing to you just now. I have struck up 
quite a correspondence with the editor of Everybody's 
Magazine. I have sold him two articles in August 
and have orders for others. In writing to him some 
time ago I suggested an article with a title something 
like 'The Art and Humor of Holding Up a Train,' 
telling him that I thought I could get it written by 
an expert in the business. 

"Of course, I mentioned no names or localities. He 
seemed very much struck with the idea and has written 
twice asking about it. The only fear he had, he said, 
was that the expert would not put it in a shape suit- 
able for publication in Everybody's as John Wana- 
maker was very observant of the proprieties. 

"Now, if you would care to turn yourself loose on 
the subject there may be something in it and a start 
on future work besides. Of course, you needn't dis- 
close j'our identity in the slightest degree. What he 
wants (as I thought he would) is a view of the subject 
from the operator's standpoint. 

"My idea would be a chatty sort of article — ^just 
about the way you usually talk, treating it descrip- 
tively and trying out the little points and details, 
just as a man would talk of his chicken farm or his 
hog ranch. 

"If you want to tackle it, let me know and I'll send 
you my idea of the article, with all the points that 
should be touched upon. I will either go over it and 



WITH O. HENRY 259 

arrange it according to my conception of the magazine 
requirements, or will forward your original MS., 
whichever you prefer. Let me know soon, as I want 
to answer his letter. 

"Well how is the P. O. and vice versa? It's an 
awful job for me to write a letter. I believe my pencil 
handwriting is nearly as bad as yours. 

"One letter to Harris is the best I've accomplished 
in the way of correspondence since I left. I haven't 
written to Louisa in two months. I hope she 
don't feel grieved. I am going to write her pretty 
soon. 

"If I could get 30 days in the O. P. I believe I'd 
crack one of the statues that much to get a change 
of society from the hounds here. I'd rather sit in the 
dumphouse there and listen to the bucket lids rattle 
than to hear these varmints talk, as far as entertain- 
ment is concerned. 

"Pard, they don't get no lowdowneder than the air 
here. If I could just have that black coon that comes 
in the P. O. every night with a tin bucket to run with 
here instead of Pittsburglars, I'd be much better 
satisfied. 

"Give Billy R. my profoundest respects. Tell him 
he's more pumpkins than the whole population of 
Pennsylvania rolled into one man, not excluding John 
Wanamaker's Sunday school class. May the smoke 
of his cigarettes ascend forever. 

"Write me as soon as you feel like it and I assure 
you I will be glad to hear from you. I am surrounded 
by wolves and fried onions, and a word from one of 
the salt of the earth will come like a clap of manna 



260 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

from a clear roof garden. Remember me to Messrs. 
Ira Maralatt and Star (D. J.). 

"Sincerely yours, W. S. P." 

In less than two months the road from prison forked 
into the road to fame for Bill Porter. The plans he 
had made matured. He set resolutely to his work. 

"Behold me, the lazy man Louisa used to guy," 
he said in a second letter, "averaging $150 a month. 
I always knew they didn't know laziness from dignified 
repose." 

That letter from Porter did more than restore trust 
in a friend. It gave me a foothold on the great bridge. 
Self-confidence and hope leaped into quivering 
vitality. Bill Porter believed I could make good. He 
was holding out a hand to me. 

I set to work that night. Billy held the pens. We 
were the kind who "dash off stories" that editors dash 
back. It was nearly morning when the first draft of 
the "holdup" was ready for mail. 

Our Fate drives onward like a snowball — gathering 
momentum with every act. Some deed that is but a 
flake drops across the current of our lives and before 
we are aware of it the flake has doubled, tripled its 
size. A thousand kindred flakes flutter down to meet 
it until the tremendous force gathers itself together 
and rushes us to our Destiny. 

It seemed to be this way with me. Porter's letter 
was the first incident — another and another came pre- 
cipitately. A new outlook was before me. 

We sent the outline of the story to Porter. In two 
days we had an answer. 



WITH O. HENRY 261 

"Dear Pard — Your prompt reply was received this 
morning and read with pleasure. I assure you it is 
always a joyful thing for a man in Pittsburgh to be 

reminded of the O. P. It is like Lazarus in H 

looking up and seeing the rich men order a schooner. 

"Am I then so much in love with the O. P.? No, 
my son, I am speaking comparatively. I am only try- 
ing to put the royal skibunk onto Pittsburgh. The 
only difference between P. and O. P. is that they are 
allowed to talk at dinner here. . . ." 

With the most illuminating detail, Porter went on 
to give me the directions for writing the story. I used 
my first experience in train-robbery — the stickup of 
the M. K. T. That letter was a lesson in short-story 
writing. It showed the unlimited pains O. Henry 
took to make his work the living reality it is. 

He neglected nothing — character, setting, atmos- 
phere, traits, slang — all were considered; all must be 
in harmony with the theme. I spoke of this letter 
in connection with the chapter on my first expedition 
with the outlaws. It served as a model outline for me 
in my future attempts. 

When the story was finished Billy and I went over 
it. Billy demanded that real blood be shed just to 
give it color, but I stuck to the facts. The genuine 
outlaw kills only when his own life is at stake. 

"It's a wonder, anyway, Al — gee whiz — you and 
Bill will be no end famous." 

Porter revised the narrative, slashed it, added to it, 
put the kick in it — made it a story. We waited a 
month for an answer. And in the mean time, Fate 
was busy. 



262 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

For three years my father and my brother John 
had worked persistently for the commutation of my 
sentence. They had many influential friends. Frank 
was still in Leavenworth. His term was but five years. 
I had worked up a following with the wealthy con- 
tractors. Some of them took a liking to me. They 
promised to pull the wires to win my release. All at 
once, our combined efforts seemed to have produced 
a result. 

I was filling out requisitions in the warden's office. 
A big, corpulent man, bluff, hardy, but likable, walked 
into the room. He seemed to fill up the entire space. 
I don't believe the Lord Himself would have given 
out such an all-pervading impression. The man was 
Mark Hanna. 

"Where is the warden?" he asked. "Out," I an- 
swered. 

"I'm looking for a man by the name of Jennings." 

"I presume I'm the man," I answered with great 
dignity. "That's my name." 

Hanna sent an appraising glance from the top of 
my fiery head to my well-shined boots. He brushed 
out his hand as though flecking me out of his mind 
as a man might a fly from his wrist. 

"Well, you're not the Jennings I'm looking for. 

This fellow was a train-robbing s in the 

Indian Territory." 

"I'm all of that except the s ." 

The heavy fellow laughed until his jowls shook. 

"Why, j^ou're no bigger than a shrimp and just 
about that red." 

Even from a Senator this raillery was a bit insolent. 



WITH O. HENRY 263 

I didn't exactly like it. "Senator, a Colt's forty-five 
makes all men equal." Hanna seemed greatly 
amused. The warden came in. 

"Who is this atom?" he asked. Darby entered at 
once into Hanna's merriment. 

"The gentleman was a train-robber by profession. 
His name is Jennings. His career met with a sad 
interruption and now he is detained here by the gov- 
ernment for life." 

Hanna evidently had the school boy's idea of the 
bandit. He was prepared to see a six-footer with a 
tough mug where a human face should be and the 
mark of all damnation in his mouth and eye. He 
couldn't reconcile my five-foot four with the picture. 
But he sat down and we began to talk. I became 
voluble. I told him a hundred odd escapades of the 
outlaw days. It seemed to entertain him. 

"You're a likable microbe. I've heard of you from 
very reliable sources. I believe you are straight, I'll 
speak to Mr. McKinley about you. He is the kindest 
man in the world. We'll get you out." 

The promise raised me to almost hysterical hilarity. 
I could think of nothing but freedom. I imagined I 
would be turned loose perhaps the next day — surely 
within a week. I wrote to Porter telling him I would 
see him within the fortnight. We could collaborate 
on another story. (For Porter had been generous 
enough to call me a collaborator for the "dope" on 
the holdup.) He wrote back. 

"Great news," he said. "Hanna can do it. He made 
the President and he has a chattel mortgage on the 
United States." 



264 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

The fortnight came. Porter sent an urgent query. 
"Why didn't you show up, colonel ? I had the schoon- 
ers chartered." In the same letter he told me that 
the story as he had revised it had been accepted by 
Everybody's. The check would be sent on publica- 
tion. 

"As soon as the check comes, I'll send you your 
*sheer of the boodle.' By the way, please keep my 
nom de plume strictly to yourself. I don't want any- 
one to know just yet. 

"P. S. — Did you get a little book on short story 
writing? The reason I ask, I had a store order it 
and they were to send it direct to you. You have to 
watch these damn hellions here or they'll do you for 
5 cents." 

The story-writing kept my mind occupied in the 
months of waiting for the promised commutation. At 
last a telegram came ! I would be free. 

They were anxious, straining days — ^in that week 
before my discharge. Hopes, ambitions, old ideals — 
they went like tireless phantoms before my eyes. 
Waking or sleeping, I had but one thought — "I must 
make good — I've got to get back — I'll show them 
all." 

It was the morning of my release. Warden Darby 
met me in the corridor. 

"Walk over to the hospital with me, Al." Darby's 
face was mottled grey — it got that way whenever he 
was laboring under excitement or anger. 

"By God, Al, I hate to tell you!" 

I stood still — the hot blood pounding into my 
throat, my ears. I felt as though the flesh were drop- 



WITH O. HENRY 265 

ping from my bones in a kind of throbbing terror. 
Was my father dead ? Was John dead ? 

"They've done you a damn' scurvy trick, Al. The 
United States marshal is waiting for you. They're 
going to take you to Leavenworth for five years 
more." 

Five years more in prison! It might as well have 
been fifty. A blighting tornado of rage overswept 
me, whipping out every new hope, every honest 
thought. I felt lashed and tormented as though the 
blood in my veins were suddenly turned into a million 
scorpions, stinging me to a hot fury of blinding mad- 
ness. 

I rushed into the post-office, dashed the neat bundle 
of treasures I had gathered to the ground. Photo- 
graphs of some of the "cons" — a steel watch fob a 
"lifer" in the contract shop made for me, an old 
wooden box fashioned by a "stir-bug" in the lumber 
mills — these and a few other things I had wrapped 
together. I wanted these mementoes. Billy looked 
at me and the trinkets strewn to the floor. 

"Don't seem to be too chipper, Al. Ain't sorry to 
kick the dust of the O. P. oif your boots, be ye?" 

I was kneeling on the floor, dumping the treasure 
into a big handkerchief and dumping them out again, 
scarcely conscious of the repetition. I was afraid to 
talk, afraid even to look at Billy. A murderous hatred 
was rearing like an angry snake in my mind. 

Before I was aware of it Billy had shuffled over to 
me, helping himself along with the chair. He sat 
down, grabbed the bundle out of my hands and tied 
it up. 



266 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"What hit you, Al?" 

"Double-crossed. 'Tain't New York, 'tain't Okla- 
homa, it's Leavenworth for me — five years." 

I spat the words out in a vicious gust. Billy 
dropped the bundle, his mouth sagged open. Amazed 
and unbelieving, he stared at me. 

"Can't be true, Al. They're kiddin' you." 

I took the bundle from him. "The marshal is wait- 
ing for me!" I started running from the room. 

"Al, you ain't going without sayin' goodby?" 
Billy's crippled spine kept him from reacliing me. 
I turned back. He stretched out his slender hand. 
He was crying. "It's a damn' shame, Al." 

I went outside into a warm flood of sunshine. There 
was a zip and a dash in the air and the flowers seemed 
to flaunt their jaunty spring colors. If I had been 
free I would have gulped in that buoyant gladness 
in the air. 

I was doomed, and the slap in the soft breezes 
put only an added tang to the bitterness in my heart. 
The marshal's long, black figure leaned against a 
stone column just outside the gates. He was twirling 
something that glittered in his hands. 

As I came near him he took a step toward me, 
dangling the handcuffs. Something insane, unreason- 
ing as a tiger, possessed me. I made a leap. The 
marshal drew back. We faced each other, both ready 
to spring. And then Darby, breathless and flurried, 
was between us. 

"Don't handcuff him! He's straight as a die." The 
marshal, already weak with fear, dropped the steel 
rings into his pocket. "He Avon't try to escape." 



WITH O. HENRY 267 

For the entire trip he made no attempt to guard me. 
I made no effort to escape. At Leavenworth he turned 
me over to the warden. The shame and the ignominy 
of going again through the measurements, the 
mugging, the head-shaving, of standing again in the 
fourth-grade criminal class, humiliated me with a 
mean, paltry, slap-in-the-face kind of feeling. 

I had no interest left in life. Not even the thought 
of seeing Frank buoyed me. 

I felt too degraded to wish for the meeting. It was 
a silent, mournful reunion two pals had. Frank 
looked at me and I at him, and we didn't say a word 
until the guard beckoned for me to leave. 

Something had died in me. After that I saw very 
little of my brother. I didn't even try to see him. Six 
months of weary, sordid stagnation wheeled along. 

And then one morning, with but a breath of warn- 
ing, the light broke for me. I walked out of the pen. 

John and my father had pressed my case. The 
United Circuit Court of Appeals released me on a 
writ of habeas corpus. The court ruled that my 
imprisonment in Leavenworth was illegal and that the 
verdict which sentenced me to five years was worthless, 
as I had received this term on top of a sentence to 
life. 

I had been convicted in one county and given life 
for the Rock Island train-robbery. I had been im- 
mediately whisked to another district and given five 
years for assault on Marshal Bud Ledbetter. The 
court ruled that this district had no jurisdiction over 
me at the time the sentence was imposed. 

When they told me I was free it was as immaterial 



268 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

to me as though they had ordered me to carry a 
message from one cell block to another. 

Six months before Billy Raidler and I had sat far 
into the night discussing my future. Should I go to 
New York and try to write, make a fortune and return 
to the home folks? 

Should I dash back to them dead broke and trust 
to luck for success? 

These problems did not exist for me now. I had 
fallen into a kind of lethargy. I had written to no 
one. I had put far away every ambition and plan for 
the "come back." I was a sort of animated corpse. 

Not until I stood at the door of Frank's cell and he 
put out his hand and looked down at me did a tremor 
of emotion seize me. My brother started to speak. 
His words were muffled and indistinct. He held my 
hand. 

"For God's sake, Al, let her be on the square from 
now on!" It came out blurting, anxious, pleading. 
An overpowering tide of remorse swept over me. I'd 
have given the soul out of my body to have changed 
places with him. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

Practice of law; invitation from O. Henry; visit to Roosevelt; citizenship 
rights restored; with O. Henry in New York; the writer as guide. 

It was on the square with me. I went back to 
Oklahoma and took up the practice of law. After a 
year of temptation, hardship and starving in a land 
of plenty I began to make good. One case followed 
another. I had a few big successes. 

Several years passed. I had all but forgotten Bill 
Porter. One morning a big, square envelope came 
through the mails. The moment I glanced at that 
clear, fine handwriting something seemed to reach into 
me and grab me by the heart. 

I felt a bubbling happiness singing as it had not in 
years. I could hear the whispering music of Bill 
Porter's voice lisping across the continent. 

That letter came early in 1905. Porter urged me to 
write. The old ambition flared up. I started again on 
the "Night Riders." It was the beginning of a long 
correspondence. And then came a letter : 

"Algie Jennings, The West, Dear Al: Got your 
message all right. Hope you'll follow it soon. Well, 
as I had nothing to do, I thought I would write you a 
letter and as I have nothing to say I will now close 
(joke)." 

The letter rambled through four delicious pages of 



270 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

whimsicality, each urging me in a different vein to 
visit New York. When I finished it I started to pack 
my trunk. 

Bill Porter was already a celebrity in New York. 
He was O. Henry, the man endeared to a million 
hearts for his stories in "The Four Million," "The 
Voice of the City," and four other equally famous 
collections. The thought of visiting this glorified Bill 
thrilled me. 

But I had another motive in making the trip. I 
was going to make a stop-over in Washington. I 
decided to call on Theodore Roosevelt at the White 
House. I wanted a full and free pardon. I wanted 
to be restored to citizenship. 

No triumph in the courtroom had ever dulled my 
pride on this score. Every time I passed an election 
booth and saw other men casting their ballots I was 
stung with humiliation. 

Since my release from Leavenworth I had worked 
incessantly toward regaining my rights. The biggest 
Republican in Oklahoma had spoken for me. I de- 
cided to make my plea personally to the greatest of 
them all. Sheer gall won me that audience — ^unbiased 
fairness on the part of the President made the mission 
a success. 

John Abernathy was United States marshal in 
Oklahoma. He was a hunter. When Roosevelt had 
come to the State Abernathy was his wolf-catcher. 
Between the two men there was a deep, sincere affec- 
tion. Abernathy was a friend of mine. He agreed to 
make the trip and present my case to President 
Roosevelt. 



WITH O. HENRY 271 

We had managed to get ourselves into the Cabinet 
room. Five or six men were standing around filling 
up the moments of waiting with lusty chatter. Only 
one of them I recognized — ^Joe Cannon. Abernathy 
and I stood in one corner, as futile and helpless as 
two little buttermilk calves trying to find shelter from 
the rain. 

I kept my glance fastened on a door. "He'll come 
through that one," I thought. But when the door shot 
open with a vigorous push and the Great Man came 
swinging in, the shock of excited emotion bewildered 
me. 

Roosevelt's presence seemed to tingle through the 
room as though a vivid current of electricity were 
suddenly conducted from one to another. It was the 
first time I had ever seen him. He looked as though 
he had come up from a stimulating swim, as though 
every drop of blood throbbed with eager health. 

The quivering exuberance of youth met the rugged 
strength of maturity in the abounding personality 
standing in the middle of the Cabinet room. He saw 
every man at a glance. He ignored practically all but 
Abernathy. 

"Hello, John !" The tense hand reached out. "How 
iare the wolves down in Oklahoma?" He swept 
around. Roosevelt didn't walk or step ; there was too 
much spontaneity, too much vitality in every gesture 
for such prosy motions. "This, gentlemen, is my 
United States marshal, John Abernathy of Okla- 
homa." 

"Mr. President, this is my friend, Al Jennings," 
the wolf -catcher replied. 



272 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

Roosevelt's quick, boring eyes turned on me. "I'm 
glad to see you sir. I know what you want. I'm a 
very busy man. I'll have to see you later." 

"Mr. President," the words catapulted out of my 
mouth, "I'll never get in here again. My business is 
more important to me than your Cabinet meeting. I 
want to be a citizen of the United States again." 

The snapping light of humor came into the eyes, 
and at once Roosevelt seemed to me to have the 
shrewdest, kindest, most tolerant expression I had 
ever seen. He seemed to be taking a whimsically 
measured appraisement of me. 

"I think j^ou're right, sir. Citizenship is greater in 
this country of ours than a Cabinet meeting." He 
turned to the men. "Gentlemen, excuse me a moment. 
You'll have to wait." 

In the private room near where the Cabinet met 
Roosevelt sat on the edge of a desk. "I want to know," 
he shot out abruptly, "if you were guilty of the crime 
you went to prison for." 

"No, sir." 

"You were not there then?" 

"I was there, I held up the train and robbed the 
passengers." The relentlessly honest eyes never took 
their glance from mine. "But I did not rob the 
United States mail, and that's what I was convicted 
for." 

"That's a distinction without a difference." The 
words were snapped out with incisive clearness. 

"It's the truth, however, I'll tell you nothing, Mr. 
President, but the truth." 

"Abernathy and Frank Frans have assured me you 



WITH O. HENRY 273 

would tell only the truth. I have studied your case. 
I am going to give you a full and free pardon. I 
want you to be worthy of it." 

It would have been ended then. But the devil of 
perversity that had so often loosened my tongue 
whisked me to the absurd folly of replying. I had 
no sense of the proprieties. 

"Mr. President, the court that sentenced me was 
more guilty of violating the law than I was. Judge 
Hosea Townsend won the verdict from the jury by 
trickery." 

If I had suddenly gone up and slapped his face, 
Roosevelt would not have sprung down with more 
flashing indignation. A red flurry of anger scooted 
across his face. He scowled down at me, the even 
teeth showing. I thought he was going to strike me. 
I had said too much. I'd have given an eye to own 
the words again. 

"You have brought charges against one of my 
appointees." His voice was even and quiet. "You 
will have to substantiate this." 

I thought the pardon was lost. I told him the facts. 

Ten jurors had testified under oath that Marshal 
Hammer of the Southern District of Indian Territory 
had come into the jury room when they were de- 
liberating the evidence in my case and he had told 
them Judge Townsend would give me the lightest 
sentence under the law if they would return a verdict 
of guilty. Under the impression that I would be 
given a year, they voted me guilty. The next morning 
Townsend sentenced me for life to the Ohio peniten- 
tiary. 



274 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

My brother John had secured these affidavits. They 
were on file in the attorney general's office. I told 
the President this. 

He never said a word, but went to the door and 
gave some hasty order. Then he came back, walking 
furiously up and down the room, holding himself stiff 
and clenched. 

It seemed to me that I could feel the vibrating 
anger in his mind. Some word came back from the 
outer room. 

"You are a truth-teller," Roosevelt turned to me. 
"The pardon is yours. Be worthy of it. I wish you 
good luck." 

He seemed borne down by suppressed emotion. He 
offered me his hand. I was so touched I could scarcely 
mumble my thanks. A free man and a citizen, I 
landed in 'New York to meet Bill Porter. 

I had counted too much on Bill Porter's fame. I 
knew that New York was a big place, but I had an 
idea that Porter would tower above the crowd like 
a blond Hercules in a city of dwarfs. 

Abernathy and I had rollicked along from Wash- 
ington to New York. When the boat swung down the 
Hudson we didn't know whether we were en route 
to Liverpool or Angel Island. But we did know that 
we were looking for one Bill Porter. I had lost the 
letter giving me his address. 

We wandered up one street and down another, a 
queer-looking pair with our wide fedora hats. Every 
now and then I made bold and plucked the sleeve of 
some man, woman or child. "Hey, pard, can you tell 
me where Bill Porter lives?" They stared coldly and 



WITH O. HENRY 275 

passed on. I heard one young fellow titter, "The 
poor babes from the woods." 

We couldn't find Bill. 

But we were in an irrepressibly happy mood. With 
not the slightest idea how we got there we landed at 
the Breslin Hotel. We began to treat everybody at 
the bar. 

The whole crowd knew the Outlay and the Wolf- 
Catcher were in town. 

"By golly, we haven't found Bill." Abernathy 
smashed his glass down on the counter. 

"Bill who?" the bartender asked. 

"Bill Porter. Know him, greatest man in New 
York?" 

"Sure, know them all." 

"Let's telephone to the President and ask him 
where this fellow lives. He's a good sport ; he'll send 
us a pilot." Abernathy's "hunch" gave me a better 
one. Dr. Alex Lambert, physician to Roosevelt, had 
shown us many courtesies. He lived in New York. 
We decided to use him as our guide if we could find 
him. 

I remembered that Porter lived near Gramercy 
Park, I phoned to the doctor and with the utmost 
formality asked directions to this district. The 
absurdity of the question didn't seem to amaze him. 
He went into elaborate details. 

Arm in arm, Abernathy and I sauntered to the 
park and with the most painful dignity went up the 
steps of every house and rang the bell, inquiring for 
Bill Porter. Not a soul had ever heard of him. Some- 
how or other we strayed into the Players' Club. The 



276 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

flunkies didn't like the cut of our clothes. We had to 
bribe them before they would admit us. 

"Where is Mr. William Sydney Porter, the 
writer?" I asked one of them. 

"Didn't know; never heard of him. Ask him over 
there. He knows even the small fry. He's Bob 
Davis." 

The chunky little fellow with his ample, humorous 
face and his keen gray eyes, was standing at the door 
of a big meeting room. I went up to him. 

"Are you acquainted with Bill Porter?" 

"Never heard of the gentleman." He didn't even 
shift his glance toward me. "My circle embraces only 
writers, waiters and policemen." 

And then I remembered who it was I was looking 
for. 

"Oh, thank you." I tried to make my voice very 
casual. "Do you happen to know a man by the name 
of O. Henry?" The little fellow's face lit up like an 
arc lamp. His hand swooped down on mine. "Do I? 
I should say so. Do you?" 

"Me!" I fairly screamed at him. "Hell, yes, he's 
an old pal of mine." 

"So? What part of the West does he come from?" 
The editor's scrutiny took in even the freckles on my 
hand. Porter had them guessing already. They would 
not learn his secret from me. For a moment I did 
not answer. 

"He's from the South," I said finally. "Do you 
know where I can find him?" 

"Ring up the Caledonia Hotel, 28 West Twenty- 
sixth Street." 



WITH O. HENRY 277 

Porter was found at last. 

"Is that you, colonel?" The same old rich, sus- 
penseful flavor in the whispering voice. "I'll be with 
you anon. God bless you." 

In a very short "anon" in came the immaculate, 
flawless Bill as though something adventurous and 
exciting had just happened to him or were just about 
to happen. He wore a handsome gray suit, with a 
rich blue tie, the everlasting glove and cane in his 
right hand. 

"Hey, Bill, why don't you carry a forty-five instead 
of that trinket?" 

"Colonel, the forty-five is not fashionable just now. 
And there are folks in Manhattan who object to the 
custom, notably the Legislature." 

Just as though it had been five minutes since I had 
spoken to him instead of five years! With all his 
warm, fine-tempered affection, he stood silent and 
searched my face. 

"It's you, colonel. Ain't spoiled, are you?" 

We sat down to a table, ordered a drink, forgot to 
drink it and sat there shaking each other's hand and 
nodding to each other like a pair of mutes. 

"How are Hans and Fritz?" Porter's voice was 
charged with feeling. Yet the twins were but a pair 
of prison kittens born and raised in the post-office. 

Like ar pair of farmer boys who had grown up to- 
gether, ducked in the same creek and gone to the 
little school on Ball Knob, we sat back swapping 
reminiscences of the hated, horror-haunted O. P. 

"It's good you've been there', colonel. It's the 
proper vestibule to this City of Damned Souls. The 



278 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

crooks there are straight compared to the business 
thieves here. If you've got $2 on you, invest it now 
or they'll take it away from you before morning.'* 

It was midnight when we started down to the old 
Hoffman House for a farewell toast. We were to 
meet early next morning for our first survey of the 
little village. Abernathy and I were up at six. Porter 
came over at eleven. The first feature on his enter- 
tainment program was a joyride on a "rubberneck 
wagon." 

"You'll get a swift, fleeting glimpse of this Bagdad 
and its million mysteries. You'll see the princess in 
disguise glide past the street corners evading evil 
genii; meeting with grand viziers. Keep your eyes 
open." 

Abernathy, Porter and I were the only passengers. 
In a raucous sing-song the guide shouted. "To your 
right, gentlemen, is the home of Sheridan Land," or 
some such cognomen. "And further down to your 
left is the tomb of Grant." 

Porter fidgeted. He got up and handed the cicerone 
a $2 bill. "Keep your tongue in your cheek," he said 
impressively. "We are neither entomologists inter- 
ested in gold bugs nor antiquarians hob-nobbing with 
the dead. We are children of Bacchus. Lead us to 
the curb." 

It was a cold, raw day. Cicerone, wolf -catcher, out- 
law, genius, we took many side trips to the haunts of 
our father. The driver became reckless and jammed 
into a street car. For a moment it looked as if we 
would all be "pinched." Abernathy and I wanted to 
"mix it with the cop." 



WITH O. HENRY 279 

"Restrain yourselves, gentlemen. I will straighten 
the legal tangle." With commanding elegance, Porter 
stepped down, threw open his coat and showed some 
sort of star. The policeman apologized. It seemed a 
miracle to us. 

"He is the magician of Bagdad," I whispered to 
Abernathy. In the next three weeks he proved it. 
Bill Porter waved his hand and his "Bagdad on the 
Subway" yielded its million mysteries to the touch. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Episodes of city nights; feeding the hungry; Mame and Sue; suicide 

of Sadie. 

Night was the revealing hour for the magician of 
Bagdad. When the million lights flashed and throngs 
of men and women crowded the thoroughfares in long, 
undulating lines like moving, black snakes, Bill Porter 
came into his own. 

He owned the city, its people were his subjects. 
He went into their midst, turning upon them the 
shrewd microscope of his gleaming understanding. 
Sham, paltry deceit, flimsy pose, were blown away as 
veils before a determined wind. The souls stood forth, 
naked and pathetic. The wizard had his way. 

At every corner, adventure waited on his coming. 
A young girl would skim stealthily around the corner, 
or an old "win" would crouch in a doorway. Here 
were mysteries for Porter to solve. He did not stand 
afar and speculate. He always made friends with his 
subjects. 

He learned their secrets, their hopes, their disap" 
pointments. He clasped the hand of Soapy, the bum, 
and Dulcie herself told him why she went totally 
bankrupt on six dollars a week. New York was an 
enchanted labyrinth, yielding at every twist the thrill 
of the unexpected — the wonderful. 



WITH O. HENRY 281 

Into this kingdom of his, Bill Porter introduced me. 

Jaunty, whimsical, light-hearted, he came for me 
one of the first nights of my visit. He wore a little 
Cecil Brunner rose in his buttonhole. With a sheepish 
wink, he pulled another from his pocket. 

"Colonel, I have bought you a disguise. Wear this 
and they will not know you are from the West." 

"Damn it, I don't want the garnishings." But when 
Bill had a notion he carried it out. The pink bud was 
fastened to my coat. "I've noticed that the bulls look 
at you with a too favorable eye. This token will divert 
suspicion from us." 

"Where are we going?" 

"Everywhere and nowhere. We may find ourselves 
in Hell's Kitchen or we may land in Heaven's Ves- 
tibule. Prepare yourself for thrills and perils. We 
go where the magnet draweth." 

It was nearing midnight. We started down Fifth 
Avenue and were sauntering along somewhere be- 
tween Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth. Dozens of 
women with white, garish faces had flitted by. 

"Ships that pass in the night," Porter whispered. 
"There are but two rocks in their courses — the cops 
and their landladies. Battered and storm-tossed, 
aren't they? They haunt me." 

Out from the shadow came a ragged wisp of a girl. 
She looked about 17. 

"She's been skimming the tranquil bogs of country 
life." 

"Aw, shucks, she's an old timer." 

"First trip," Porter nudged me. She hasn't learned 
how to steer her bark in the deeps of city hfe yet." 



282 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"That's her game. She's just flying that sail for 
effect." 

"No, you're mistaken. You investigate and we'll 
see who's correct. I'll stand here and hold the horses." 
Porter had a way of pulling things out of the past 
and snapping them at me. 

As we came up, the girl dodged into a doorway, 
making a pretense of tying her shoe. She looked up 
at me, fright darting in her wide, young eyes. "You're 
a plainclothes man?" Her voice was low but it shrilled 
in her fear. 

"Please don't take me in. I never did this before." 

"I'm not a policeman, but I'd like to introduce you 
to a friend of mine." 

Bill came over. "You've frightened the lady. Ask 
her if she would like to dine with us." 

More frightened than before, the girl drew back. 
"I dare not go with you!" 

"You dare go anywhere with us." Porter addressed 
her as though she were truly the princess and he the 
Knight Errant. 

There was nothing personal in his interest. He had 
one indomitable passion — ^he wished to discover the 
secret and hidden things in the characters of the men 
and women about him. He wanted no second-hand or 
expurgated versions. He was a scientist and the 
quivering heart of humanity was the one absorbing 
subject under his scrutiny. 

We went to Mouquin's. The little, thin, white 
creature had never been there before. Her eyes were 
luminous with excitement. Porter made her feel so 
much at ease, it disconcerted me a trifle. I wanted the 



WITH O. HENRY 283 

girl to know that she was in the presence of greatness. 

"He's a great writer," I whispered to her. Porter 
turned a withering sneer at me. "I'm nothing of the 
sort," he contradicted. "Oh, but I believe it," she 
said. "I'd like to see what you write. Is it about 
wonderful people and money and everything grand?" 

"Yes," Porter answered. "It's about girls like you 
and all the strange things that happen to you." 

"But my life isn't fine. It's just mean and scraping 
and hungry, and fine things never happened to me 
until tonight. Ever since I can remember it's been 
the same." 

Porter had started her on the revelation. He was 
correct. She was but a little country girl. She had 
tired of the monotony and came to life. 

There was nothing remarkable about her. I couldn't 
see a story there. The only spark she showed was 
when the dinner came and then a look of inspired 
joyousness lighted her face. It seemed to me that 
Porter must surely be disappointed. 

"When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what 
caused the disaster," he said. 

"Well, what did you make of that investigation?" 

"Nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when 
the soup came ! That's the story." 

"What's behind that look of rapture? Why should 
any girl's face glow at the prospect of a plate of soup 
in this city, where enough food to feed a dozen armies 
is wasted every night? Yes, it's more of a story than 
will ever be written!" 

Each one that he met yielded a treasure to him. 
Into the honkatonks, the dance halls, the basement 



284 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

cafes he took me. The same indomitable purposes 
guided him. No wonder that New York threw off its 
disguise before the Peerless Midnight Investigator. 

"I scent an idea tonight, colonel. Let us go forth 
and track it down." It was another evening and I 
had dined with him at the Caledonia Hotel. 

We started down Sixth Avenue. The rain splashed 
sideways and down ways. Puny lights flickered up 
from basement doors. The mingled odor of stale beer, 
cabbage and beans simmered up. We went down into 
many of these paltry halls, with the sawdust on the 
floor and the chipped salt cellars and the scratched up, 
bare tables. 

"It's not here. Let us go to O'Reilly's. I don't like 
the fragrance of these dago joints." At Twenty- 
second street Porter pulled down his umbrella. "We'll 
find it in here." 

At the bar were a score of men. The tables here 
and there were but shelves for the elbows of gaudily 
dressed, cheaply jeweled women. 

We took a vacant table. As Porter sat down every 
woman in the room sent an admiring glance at him. 

"For God's sake, Bill, you won't eat in this stench, 
will you?" 

"Just beer and a sandwich. Look over there, 
colonel. I see my idea." 

In one corner sat two girls, pretty, shabby, genteel, 
the stark, piercing glare of hunger in their eyes. 
Porter beckoned to them. 

The girls came over and sat at our table. It was 
the cheapest kind of a dance hall in this basement 
under the saloon. A fellow with an accordion was 



WITH O. HENRY 285 

pounding a tune with an old rattle-bang piano ; a few 
tawdry-looking couples moved with grotesque rhythm 
in the middle of the floor. At the tables about a score 
of men sat erect and stupid — some of them half drunk; 
others bawling out harsh snatches of songs. The noisy 
guffaw of the place was more disturbing than the 
reeking exhalation of its breath. 

Porter handed the dirty scrap of paper that passed 
as a menu to the girls. Their eyes seemed to pounce 
on it. One of them was rather gracefully built, but so 
thin I had the odd feeling that she might break at any 
moment like an egg shell. She tried to scan the card 
indifferently, but her cavernous eyes, their black 
accentuated by the daubs of rouge on the transparent 
cheeks, were burning with eagerness. She caught me 
looking at her and turned to the rather short, fair- 
haired girl at her side. 

"Suppose you order, Mame." There was no pre- 
tense to Mame. She was hungry and she spotted a 
chance to eat. "Say, Mister," she leaned toward 
Porter, "can I order what I want?" 

"I don't think you better. You see, ladies, I haven't 
the price." He ordered four beers. 

I couldn't follow the drift of this experiment. 
Porter had picked out these two from the dozens of 
tell-tale painted faces. He knew his magic circle. But 
I didn't like the bore of hungry eyes. Mame was 
absorbed in watching a blowsy, puffy-cheeked woman 
amiably gathering in drippy spoonfuls of cabbage. It 
bothered me. I slipped my purse to Porter. 

"My God, Bill, buy them a feed." He sneaked it 
back to me. 



286 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Wait. There's a story here." He paid the bill. 
It was about 20 cents. He spoke a moment to the 
manager. Whatever he wanted, the manager was 
ready to give. 

"Would you ladies like to come out and get a square 
meal?" Mame looked nervously about the room. Sue 
stood up. "Thank you," she said. "It would be quite 
agreeable." 

We started toward the Caledonia Hotel, where 
Porter had his study. "We're making a mistake, Sue. 
We'll all get pinched. The instant we step into a hash 
house with these gents, the bulls'U nab us. We better 
beat it. We're makin' an awful mistake." 

"We're nuthin' but mistakes anyhow. If there's a 
chance to eat I'm gonna take it." Sue's talk vas a 
curious blend of dignitj^, bitterness and slang. 

"You're making no mistake." 

Porter led the way at a quick pace. "Where we are 
going the foot of a bull has never thumped." 

It was after one o'clock when we reached the hotel. 
Porter ordered a beefsteak, potatoes, coffee, and a 
crab salad. He served it on the table where so many 
of his masterpieces were written. In that outlandish 
situation, with Mame sitting on a box. Sue in an easy 
chair, and Porter with a towel over his arm like a 
waiter serving us, one of those stories came into being 
that morning. 

"Do you make much coin ?" When he talked to them 
he was one of them. He adopted their language and 
their thought. 

"Ain't nuthin' to be made." 

Mame was stowing in the beefsteak and swallowing 



WITH O. HENRY 287 

it with scarcely a pause. "All we can git is enough to 
pa}'' two dollars a week for a room. An' if we're lucky 
we eat and if we ain't we starve, 'cept we meet sporty 
gents like yerselves." 

"You don't know what it is to be hungry," Sue 
added quietly. She was ravenously hungry, and it was 
with an obvious jerk of her will that she kept herself 
from the greedy quickness of Mame. "You ain't suf- 
fered as we have." 

"I guess we ain't." Bill winked at me. "It's kind o' 
hard to get a footing here, I suppose." 

"Well, you guessed it that time. Sure is. If you 
come through with yer skin, you're lucky. And if 
you're soft, you die." Sue sat back and looked at her 
long white hands. 

"That's what Sadie done. Her and me come 
from Vermont together. We thought we could sing. 
We got a place in the chorus and for a while we done 
fine. Then the company laid off and it came summer 
and there was nuthin' we could do. 

"We couldn't get work anywhere and we were 
hungry everlastin'. Poor Sadie kept a-moonin' around 
and thinkin' about Bob Parkins and prayin' he'd turn 
up for her like he said he would. She was plumb 
nutty about him and when we left he sed he'd come 
and git her if she didn't make good. 

"After a while I couldn't stand it no longer and I 
went out to git some grub. I didn't give a darn how 
I got it. But Sadie wouldn't come. She said she 
couldn't break Bob's heart. He was bound to come. 
I came back in a coupla weeks. I'd made a penny. I 
thought I'd stake Sade to the fare back home. She 



288 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

was gone. She'd give up hopin' for Bob, and just 
made away with herself. Took the gas route in that 
very room where we used to stay." 

Porter was pouring out the coffee and taking in 
every word. 

"I guess Bob never showed up, did he?" 

"Yes, he turned up one day. Said he'd been lookin' 
high and low for us. Been to every boarding house in 
the town searchin' for Sade. I hated to tell him. Gee, 
he never said a word for the longest time. 

"Then he asked me all about Sade and if she'd 
carried on and why she hadn't let him know. I told 
him everything. All he said was 'Here, Sue, buy 
yerself some grub'. 

"He gave me five dollars and me and Mame paid 
the rent and we been eatin' on it since. That was a 
week ago. I haven't seen Bob since. He was awful 
cut up about it." 

Sue talked on in short, jerky sentences, but Porter 
was no longer paying the slightest attention to her. 
Suddenly he got up, went over to a small table and 
came back with a copy of "Cabbages and Kings." 

"You might read this when you get time and tell 
me what you think of it." 

The supper was finished. Porter seemed anxious 
to be rid of us all. The girls were quite pleased to 
leave. The little one looked regretfully at the bread 
and meat left on the table. 

"You got plenty for breakfast!" 

There was a paper on the chair. I shoved the food 
into it and tied it up. "Take it with you." Sue was 
embarrassed. 



WITH O. HENRY 289 

"Mame! For Gawd's sake, ain't you greedy 1" 
Mame laughed. 

"Rainy day like to come any time for us." 

Porter was preoccupied. He scarcely noticed that 
they were gone. The idea had been tracked. It 
possessed him. He already smelled the fragrance of 
mignonette. 

Sue had yielded her story to the magician. It went 
through the delicate mill of his mind. It came out in 
the wistful realism of "The Furnished Room." 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Quest for material; Pilsner and the Halberdier; suggestion of a story; 
dining with editors; tales of train-robberies; a mood of despair. 

If Porter caught the Voice of the City as no other 
has; if he reached the veins leading to its heart, it is 
because he was an inveterate prospector, forever hurl- 
ing his pick into the asphalt. He struck it rich in the 
streets and the restaurants of Manhattan. Running 
through the hard-faced granite of its materialism, he 
came upon the deep shaft of romance and poetry. 

Shot through the humdrum strata, the mellow 
gold of humor and pathos glinted before his eyes. 
New York was his Goldfield. But his lucky strike 
was muscled by Relentless Purpose, not Chance. Nq 
story-writer ever worked more persistently than O. 
Henry. He was the Insatiable Explorer. 

The average man adopts a profession or a trade. 
In his leisure he is glad to turn his attention to other 
hobbies. With O. Henry, his work made up the sum 
total of his life. The two were inseparable. 

He could no more help noticing and observing and 
mentally stocking up than a negative could avoid 
recording an image when the light strikes it. He had 
a mind that innately selected and recounted the 
story. 

Sometimes he came upon the gold already separ^- 



WITH O. HENRY 291 

ated, as in the story Sue told him. Sometimes there 
was but a sparkle. In fact, it was seldom that he took 
things as he found them. 

His gravel went through many a wash before it 
came out O. Henry's unalloyed gold. What would 
have been but so much crushed rock for another, 
gleamed with nugget dust for him. So it was with 
"the Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss." 

"I'll introduce you to Pilsner," he said to me one 
night, when we started out on our rounds. "You'll 
like it better than your coffee strong enough to float 
your bandit bullets." 

We went to a German restaurant on Broadway. 
We took a little table near the foot of the stairs. In 
one of his stories O. Henry says that "the proudest 
consummation of a New Yorker's ambition is to shake 
hands with a spaghetti chef or to receive a nod from 
a Broadway head waiter." That mark of deference 
was often his. 

The Pilsner was good, but the thing of chief in- 
terest to me was a ridiculous figure standing at the 
landing of the stairs tricked out as an ancient Hal- 
berdier. I couldn't take my glance from him. He had 
the shiftiest eyes and the weakest hands. The contrast 
to his mighty coat of steel was laughable. 

"Look at that weak-kneed saphead. Bill. Picture 
him as an ancient man-at-arms!" His fingers were 
yellow with nicotine to the knuckles. 

Porter looked at him^ sat back, finished his beer in 
silence. "It's a good story." That was all he said. 
We went home early and both of us were sober. 
Whenever this happened we used to sit in Bill's room 



292 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

and talk until one or two o'clock. This night it was 
diiferent. 

"Are you sleepy tonight, colonel?" he said. "I 
think I shall retire." 

Whenever his mind was beset with an idea he lapsed 
into this extremely formal manner of speaking. It 
was bitterly irritating to me. I would leave in a kind 
of huff determined not to bother him again. But I 
knew that he was not conscious of his coldness. He 
was remote because his thought had built a barrier 
about him. He could think of nothing but the story 
in his mind. 

I had an appointment with him for noon time. I 
decided not to keep it unless he remembered. At about 
10 minutes after 12 he called me up. 

"You're late. I'm waiting," he said. 

When I got to his room the big table where he did 
his writing was littered with sheets of paper. All 
over the floor were scraps of paper covered with 
writing in long hand. 

"When I get the returns on this I'll divvy up with 
you." Porter picked up a thick wad of sheets. 

"Why?" 

"It was you that gave me the thought." 

"You mean the cigarette fiend in the armor?" 

"Yes; I've just finished the yarn." 

He read it to me. Just the merest glint had come 
to him from that steel-plated armor. The Halberdier 
himself would never have recognized the gem Porter's 
genius had polished for him. The story just as it 
stands today was written by Porter some time between 
midnight and noon. 



WITH O. HENRY 293 

And yet he looked as fresh and rested as though he 
had slept ten hours. 

"Do you always grab off an inspiration like that 
and dash it off without any trouble?" 

Porter opened a drawer in the desk. "Look at 
those." He pointed to a crammed-down heap of 
papers covered with his long freehand. 

"Sometimes I can't make the story go and I lay it 
away for a happier moment. There is a lot of un- 
finished business in there that will have to be trans- 
acted some day. I don't dash off stories. I'm always 
thinking about them, and I seldom start to write until 
the thing is finished in my mind. It doesn't take long 
to set it down." 

I have watched him sit with pencil poised some- 
times for hours, waiting for the story to tell itself to 
his brain. 

O. Henry was a careful artist. He was a slave to 
the dictionary. He would pore over it, taking an in- 
finite relish in the discovery of a new twist to a word. 

One day he was sitting at the table with his back to 
me. He had been writing with incredible rapidity, as 
though the words just ran themselves automatically 
from his pen. Suddenly he stopped. For half an hour 
he sat silent, and then he turned around, rather sur- 
prised to find me still there. 

"Thirsty, colonel? Let's get a drink." 

"Bill," my curiosity was up, "does your mind feel 
a blank when you sit there like that?" The question 
seemed to amuse him. 

"No. But I have to reason out the meaning of 
words." 



294 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

There was no ostentation in Porter, either in his 
writing or in his observations. I never saw him making 
notes in public, except once in a while he would jot a 
word down on the corner of a napkin. 

He didn't want other people to know what he was 
thinking about. He didn't need to take notes, for he 
was not a procrastinator. He transmuted his thoughts 
into stories while the warm beat throbbed in them. 

Careless and irresponsible as he seemed — almost 
aimless at times — I think there was in Bill Porter a 
purposiveness that was grim and so determined that 
he would allow no external influence to interfere with 
his plan of life. 

I have sometimes felt that this passionate will to be 
himself at all times made him so aloof and reclusive. 
He sought companionship freely with strangers, for 
he could dispense with their company at will. He 
wanted to live untrammeled. And he did. He was 
incorrigibly stubborn-minded. Of all the men I have 
ever known. Bill Porter ran truest to the natural 
grain. 

As soon as New York became aware of O. Henry's 
lucky strike, it was ready with its meed of homage. 
An eager, rushing multitude sought him out. Doors 
were flung wide. The man who had but a few years 
before been separated from his fellows could now 
stand among the proudest, commanding, as he would, 
their smiles and their tears. He preferred solitude. 
Not because he disdained company — not that he feared 
exposure, but because he despised deceit and hypoc- 
risy. And these, he felt, were the inevitable attendants 
of men and women in their social intercourse. 



WITH O. HENRY 295 

"Al, I despise these Kterati." Many a time he 
voiced the sentiment. "They remind me of big 
balloons. If one were to puncture their pose, there 
would be an astonished gasp as when one sticks a pin 
in the stretched rubber. And then they would be no 
more — not even a wrinkled trace of them!" 

They could sue him with invitations. He had no 
time to waste. He was not vain, and never did he 
consciously try to impress any one. He was not of 
that righteous type that takes itself and its beliefs 
with ponderous seriousness, insisting that the world 
hear them out and then applaud. 

Bill Porter was too busy watching others to take 
much heed about his \3wn reflection. Because he was 
eminently self-sufficient, he would not allow circum- 
stances to set his friendships for him. 

But with the few who were the elect to him; who 
knew him and understood him he was the droll and 
beloved vagabond. Reticence would drop from him. 
He was in his element — the troubadour of old, the 
sparkle of his gracious wit bubbling through every 
breath of the heavier discourse. 

"I have a treat for you, colonel. Tonight you shall 
meet the Chosen Few." 

He would tell me no more, seeming to take a boyish 
delight in my irritable suspense. The Chosen Few 
happened to be Richard Duffy, Oilman Hall and 
Bannister Merwin. We had dinner together at the 
Hoffman House. 

It was a treat — for that night I saw O. Henry as 
he might have been if the buoyant happiness that 
seemed to be his native disposition had not been 



296 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

deepened and saddened by the distressing humiliation 
of his prison years. 

Porter handed me the menu. He was a bit finicky 
about his eating. "Gentlemen," he said to the dis- 
tinguished editors, "the colonel will pick out a surprise 
for us." I think Porter considered me somewhat 
brazen because I was not awed by this presence of 
the elite. 

"I could order bacon broiled on the hickory coals, 
terrapin, sour-dough biscuit and coffee strong enough 
to float the bullets — how would you like it. Bill?" 

"Don't endanger my future in my chosen profession 
by making me hit the tracks for the West." 

Duffy and Hall looked at Porter as though a 
sudden vision of his portly figure galloped before 
them on horseback and swinging a lariat. Porter 
caught the question in their eyes. He was in a tan- 
talizing mood. 

"You wouldn't mind edifying the company with a 
discourse on the ethics of train-robbing, would you, 
colonel?" The three guests sat up, tense with interest. 
It was just the setting I loved. It gave me a big 
bump of joy to throw a shock into those blase New 
Yorkers. 

Yarn after yarn I reeled off for their absorption. 
I told them all the funny incidents connected with the 
stickup of the trains in the Indian Territory. 

I made them see the outlaw, not as a ruthless brute, 
but as a human being possessed of a somewhat differ- 
ent bias or viewpoint from their own. Porter sat 
back, expansive and sedate, with his large gray eye 
lighted with amusement. 



WITH O. HENRY 297 

"Colonel, I stood in your shadow tonight," he said 
to me as we were parting at the Caledonia. 

"What do you mean, Bill?" 

"My friends to whom I introduced you ignored me. 
I was rather some pumpkins with Hall and Duffy 
until you came, and tonight I was forgotten by them. 
Would you mind the next time we are together tell- 
ing them I held the horses for you?" 

"Honest, Bill, do you mean it?" 

"Yes, I think it would add to my prestige." 

A few days later we were at Mouquin's. I was 
stringing out a lurid outlaw story. I stopped in the 
middle and turned to Porter, as though my memory 
had slipped and I had overlooked an important detail. 
"Bill, you remember," I said, "that was the night you 
held the horses." Duffy dropped his fork, sending out 
a roar of laughter. He reached over and grabbed 
Porter's hand. "By Jove, I always suspected you. 
Bill Porter." 

"I want to thank you, colonel, for those kind words. 
You have done me a great service. I sold two stories 
this morning on the strength of my presumed associa- 
tion with you," Porter said a day later. "Those fellows 
think now that I really belonged to your gang. I 
have become a personage." 

Not for worlds, though, would Porter have openly 
acknowledged to these men that he had been a 
prisoner in the Ohio penitentiary. Bob Davis, I am 
certain, knew it. He practically admitted it to me. 
Duffy and Hall felt the mystery surrounding the man. 

"Colonel, every time I step into a public cafe I 
have the horrible fear that some ex-con will come up 



298 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

and say to me 'Hello, Bill; when did you get out of 
theO. P.'?" 

No one ever did this. It would have been an in- 
sufferable shock to Porter's pride, especially when 
his success was new to him. After all the jovial 
warmth of that dinner at Mouquin's, after all the 
banter and gayety, the weight of oppressive sadness 
came down upon him. 

The memory of the past; the troubled fear of the 
future — the two together seemed ever to press like 
gigantic forces against the bonny happiness of the 
present for Bill Porter. 

I was recklessly gay. I had taken plenty of the 
"wine that boils when it is cold." In the exuberance 
I asked all the gentlemen present to be my escort 
across the river. Porter kicked me under the table, 
turning on me a straight, meaningful look. 

"Colonel, I am the only one that has nothing to do 
except yourself . These gentlemen are editors. I shall 
be glad to act as your escort and keep you from 
walking off the boat. The sea never gives up its dead." 

"I didn't want those men to be with us in our last 
moments," he said when we were crossing the Hudson. 

"Good God, Bill, you aren't going to jump over 
and pull me with you?" 

"No. But I think I would rather enjoy it." 

He had not been shamming gayety at the dinner. 
When a full tide, it had swept over him. But there 
was always an undertow of shadows and whenever he 
was alone it carried him out — often to a bitter depth 
of gloomy depression. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

Supper with a star; frank criticism; O. Henry's prodigality; Credit at 
the bar; Sue's return. 

A human prism he was — refracting the light in 
seven different colors. But different in this — he was 
not predictable. Reds and blues and yellows were in 
his moods, but sometimes the gold would predominate 
and sometimes the indigo. Bill Porter's was a baffling 
spectrum of gay and somber hues. 

These moods of his were inscrutable to me. At 
times he was so aloof I could scarcely get a word 
from him. I would go away seething with anger. And 
in an hour he would come over with the gentlest and 
subtlest persuasion to wheedle me into friendliness. 

"Bill, you've got a feminine streak in you; you're 
so damned unreliable." I meant it for a stinging 
rebuke. 

Porter looked at me, putting on a foolish simper. 
"It makes me quite interesting and enigmatic, 
doesn't it, colonel?" 

And then he became instantly serious. "Sometimes 
things look so black to me, Al. I don't see much use 
in anything. I can't bet on myself. Sometimes I 
want to have nothing to do with any one and some- 
times I envy the defiance that seems to win you so 
many friends." 

Porter could have walked down Broadway and won 



300 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

the smiling salute of every celebrity for a mile had he 
so wished. And yet he made that comment one day 
because a half-dozen bartenders had called me by 
name. 

He had been very busy getting out some stories. I 
had not seen him for four days. I improved the time 
by striking up acquaintance with the elite of the bar- 
rooms. One evening I was talking to the tender in a 
saloon across from the Flatiron Building. Both my 
listener and I were excitedly going through the peril- 
ous joys of a holdup. I heard a hesitating cough. 
Porter was at my elbow. 

"Did you find an old friend in the bartender?" he 
asked when we got outside. 

"No, I just met him yesterday." 

"Well, I stood there 10 minutes with a Sahara 
thirst on me before he turned to quench it. You're 
evidently more riches to him than my dime. 

"I've been looking for you, colonel. I went into 
five different saloons. I asked if a diminutive giant 
with a demure face and red hair had been prowling 
about the premises. 'Who, Mr. Jennings from Okla- 
homa?' they up and says, and then they try to point 
out your footprints to me on the asphalt. How do 
you do it?" 

"You ought to come here and run for Mayor. You'd 
be elected sure. And then you could appoint me your 
secretary. We'd be in clover." 

Many hours later we wheeled around again near 
the Flatiron Building. My hat was carried away in 
the tornado and then hurled down the street. 

I started to run after it. Porter's firm, strong hand 



WITH O. HENRY 301 

was on my arm. ''Don't, colonel. Some one will bring 
it to you. The north wind is considerate. It pays 
indemnities on the damage wrought. It will send a 
porter to return your headpiece to you." 

"Like hell it will." 

A likely chance it seemed at two o'clock in the 
morning. I shook off his arm, determined to recover 
my property, when dashing up from nowhere came 
an old man. "Pardon me, sir, is this yours?" 

For the second time in my life I heard Bill Porter 
send up that bubbling, sonorous laugh of his. 

For a moment I felt like a person bewitched. 
"Where in thunder did that old gnome come from, 
anyway?" 

"You oughtn't to be so particular about the 
creature's origin. You've got your hat, haven't you?" 

It was a night of gayety. "We'll continue this in 
our next, colonel. Come over at noon." It was 
Porter's good night. 

I was ready for the jaunt promptly at 12. "Mr. 
Porter is in his rooms — go right up," the clerk said. 
I reached the door. I could hear Bill stropping his 
razor. I knocked. He did not answer. 

Mindful of the joyous buoyancy of the night before 
I gave a vicious kick at the door. He did not come. 

In a gale of resentment and hurt pride, I rushed to 
my room a block away. 

"He's sick and tired of me sliding in there night and 
day," I thought. "He wants to be rid of me." I 
grabbed up my suitcase and started dumping my 
clothes into it. I planned to leave New York that 
afternoon. I was just jamming in the last few collars 



302 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

when the door opened and Bill's ruddy, understanding 
face looked down at me. 

"Forgive me, colonel, that I have not a sixth sense. 
I could not distinguish your knock from any one 
else's." Porter slipped his hand into his pocket. 
"Take this, Al, and let yourself in any hour of the 
da}?- or night. You'll never find Bill Porter's door or 
his time locked against the salt of the earth." 

More eloquent than the gift of a dollar from a 
Shylock was this tribute from the reserved Bill Porter. 

I was always under the impression that Porter's 
spirit, unshadowed by the walls of the Ohio peniten- 
tiary, would have been a buoyant, fantastic incarna- 
tion. He had a robust philosophy that withstood with- 
out the tarnish of cynicism the horrors of prison life. 

Without these searing memories I think the 
debonair grace of youth that was uppermost in his 
heart would have been the dominant force triumphant 
over the ordinary melancholy of life. 

"I have accepted an invitation for you, colonel." 
He was in one of his gently sparkling moods. "Get 
into your armor asinorum, for we fare forth to make 
contest with tinsel and gauze. In other words we 
mingle with the proletariat. We go to see Margaret 
Anglin and Henry Miller in that superb and realistic 
Western libel, 'The great Divide'." 

After the play the great actress, Porter and I and 
one or two others were to have supper at the Breslin 
Hotel. I think Porter took me there that he might sit 
back and enjoy my unabashed criticisms to the lady's 
face. 

"I feel greatly disappointed in you, Mr. Porter," 



WITH O. HENRY 303 

Margaret Anglin said to Bill as we took our places at 
the table. 

"In what have I failed?" 

"You promised to bring your Western friend- 
that terrible outlaw Mr. Jennings — to criticise the 
play." 

"Well, I have introduced him." He waved his hand 
down toward me. 

Miss Anglin looked me over with the trace of a 
smile in her eye. 

"Pardon me," she said, "but I can hardly associate 
you with the lovely things they say of you. Did you 
like the play?" 

I told her I didn't. It was unreal. No man of the 
West would shake dice for a lady in distress. The 
situation was unheard of and could only occur in the 
imagination of a fat-headed Easterner who had never 
set his feet beyond the Hudson. 

Miss Anglin laughed merrily. "New York is wild 
over it. New York doesn't know any better." 

Porter sat back, an expansive smile spreading a 
light in his gray eyes. "I am inclined to agree with 
our friend," he offered. "The West is unacquainted 
with Manhattan chivalry." Afterward he kept prod- 
ding every one present with his genial quips. 

I never saw him in a happier mood. The very next 
morning he was in the depths of despondency. I went 
over early in the afternoon. He was sitting at his desk 
rigid and silent. I started to tiptoe out. I thought he 
was concentrated in his writing. 

"Come in, Al." He had a picture in his hand. 
"That's Margaret, colonel. I want you to have the 



304 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

picture. If anything should happen to me, I think 
I'd feel happy if you would look after her." 

He seemed crushed and hopeless. He went over to 
the window and looked out. 

"You know I kind of like this old dismal city of 
dying souls." 

"What the hell has that got to do with your kicking 
off?" 

"Nothing, but the jig is up. Colonel, have you the 
price? Let's have a little refreshment. They'll be up 
with a check some time, I hope." 

I did not know the cause of his sudden overpower- 
ing dejection, but no drink could lighten it. The 
light-hearted, winsome joyousness of the night before 
had vanished. The bright hues in the spectrum were 
muddled into the drab. 

One night — a cold, raw, angry night — Bill and I 
were strolling along somewhere in the East Side. 
"Remember the kid they electrocuted at the O. P.?" 
he said to me. "I will show you life tonight that is 
more tragic than death." 

Faces that were no longer human — that seemed 
scarred and blemished as though the skin were a kind 
of web-like scale — dodged from alleyways and base- 
ments. 

"They are the other side of the Enchanted Profile. 
You don't see it on our God. He keeps it hidden." 

To Bill, long before he had written the story of that 
name, the Enchanted Profile was the face on the 
dollar. 

We were turning a dingy corner. The sorriest, 
forlornest slice of tatterdemalion came shambling 



WITH O. HENRY 305 

along. He was sober. Hunger — if you've ever felt it, 
you recognize in the other fellow's eyes — stared out 
from his emaciated face. "Hello, pard." Bill stepped 
to his side and slipped a bill into his hand. We went 
on. A moment later the hobo shuffled up. '"Scuse me, 
mister. You made a mistake. You gave me $20." 

"Who told you I made a mistake?" Porter pushed 
him. "Be off." 

And the next day he asked me to walk four blocks 
out of our way to get a drink. 

"We need the exercise. We're getting obese." I 
noticed that the bartender greeted Bill with a familiar 
smile. At the counter a big fat man jostled me, nearly 
knocking the glass from my hand. 

It made me furious. I swung my fist. Porter 
caught my arm. "They don't mean anything, these 
New York hogs." 

It happened again and again. The fourth time 
Porter asked me to go there I became curious. 

"What do you like about that rough joint, Bill?" 

"I'm broke, colonel, and the bartender knows me. 
My credit there is unlimited." 

Broke — yet he had $20 to throw away to a bum! 
Porter had no conception of money values. He seemed 
to act according to some super standard of his own. 

He beggared himself financially with his spend- 
thrift ways, but his whimsical investments brought 
him in a rich store of experience and satisfaction. The 
wealth of his self-expression was worth more to him 
than economic affluence. 

Yet he was not one who bore amiably an empty 
wallet. He liked to spend. He wished always to be 



306 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

the host. Often he would say to me, "I shall have the 
pleasure of ordering this at your expense." When the 
meal was finished I would look for the check, picking 
up the napkins and fussing about. 

"Cease your ostentation," he would say. "That is 
paid and forgotten. Don't make such a vulgar display 
of wealth." 

He liked to spend — but he liked better to give away. 
In the book he had given to Sue he had slipped a $10 
bill. She came back a few days later after the banquet 
at the Caledonia. I was waiting for Porter. 

"I've come to bring this back. Your friend, Mr. 
Bill, forgot to look before he gave it to me." Just 
then Porter came in. 

"Good morning. Miss Sue." I had forgotten her 
name and was calling her Sophie and Sarah and 
honey. Porter doffed the cap he was wearing. 

"Will you come in?" 

"I just come to hand this back." Porter looked at 
the note in her hand as though he considered himself 
the victim of a practical joker. 

"What is the meaning of this?" 

"It was in the book you give me." 

"It does not belong to me. Sue. You must have put 
it there and forgotten." 

The girl smiled, but into her intelligent black eyes 
came a look of gratitude and understanding. 

"Forgotten, Mr. Bill? If you'd only handled as 
few ten spots as I have you couldn't no wise misplace 
one without knowin' it." 

"It's yours. Sue, for I know it isn't mine. But, say. 
Sue, some day I might be hard up and I'll come 



WITH O. HENRY 307 

around and get you to stake me to a meal. And if 
you're out of luck, ring this bell." 

"There ain't many like you gents." The girl's face 
was flushed with gladness. "Mame and me, we think 
you're princes." 

Half way down the hall she turned. "I know it's 
yours, Bill. Thanks," 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

After two years; a wedding invitation; another visit to New York; 
delayed hospitality; in O. Henry's home; blacknaail. 

A hastily scrawled note accompanied a formal in- 
vitation. It was a bid to the wedding of William 
Sydney Porter and Miss Sallie Coleman, of Asheville, 
N. C. 

Bill Porter, the prowler, the midnight investigator, 
the devil-may-care Bohemian was going to squeeze 
himself into the tight-cut habit of the benedict. When 
I read that note I felt as though I had been asked to 
a funeral. 

It was more than two years since I had seen Bill. 
Son of impulse and whim that he was, who could 
figure this new venture of his? 

"Pack up your togs, colonel, and come to the show. 
It won't be complete without you." 

For months I had been planning another trip to 
New York. I wanted to get my book into print. 
Porter kept encouraging me. That was one glorious 
trait in him. If he saw a spark of talent in another 
he would fan it with praise and encouragement. 

A thousand suggestions he had given me. Short 
stories that I had written, he had taken personally to 
editors and tried to make a sale for me. Another trip 
to New York, another joyous pilgrimage into the 
Mystic Maze with the Magician of Bagdad at my 



WITH O. HENRY 309 

side — if I had any talent it would surely be kindled 
into flame. 

The little note I held in my hand was like a heavy 
wet blanket on the fire of that hope. My wife and I 
went to the finest store in Oklahoma and bought 
some kind of a cut-glass water set. I sent the requisite 
"Congratulations and Best Wishes." There ends the 
greatness of Bill Porter, I thought. I was mistaken. 

Toward the middle of December Porter returned 
a rejected manuscript to me. 

"Don't give up, colonel. I'm sure you could make 
good at short stories. Come to New York. Don't 
build any high hopes on your book. Just consider 
you're on a little pleasure trip and taking it along as 
a side line. Mighty few manuscripts ever get to be 
books and mighty few books pay. Let me know in 
advance a day or two when you will arrive. Louisa 
is in Grand Rapids. Maybe he will run over for a 
day or two." 

Less than a week later I was in New York. As 
soon as I arrived I called him up. I may have imag- 
ined it, but he did not seem like the old Bill to me. 
He was busy on a story. 

"I'll call you up and let you buy the drinks as soon 
as the manuscript is finished." 

Porter was an earnest worker. Pleasure never lured 
him from his desk, perhaps because he found such a 
joy in writing. 

A week passed. I did not hear from him. 

"He doesn't want me around his proud Southern 
wife," I thought. "Bill has put the convict number 
behind him. I've flaunted mine. This marriage of his 



310 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

may help him to forget. He probably doesn't want 
any red-headed reminder bobbing around." 

As usual I had to take back the hasty judgment. 

Richard Duffy came over for me one evening. 

"Bill wants to see you. We're all going to dinner 
together." 

We got to the Caledonia, where he still kept his 
study. Porter was at his desk, dashing in a last few 
periods. He looked tired, as though he had been under 
a long strain. 

"I've been working like the devil, Bill. I've been 
feeling very tired. Join me in a drink. Will that 
make amends?" 

"I don't know that any amends are necessary." I 
felt irritated and showed it. On the way to Mouquin's 
we scarcely spoke. I felt a kind of estrangement. 
But after the dinner the old, sunny familiarity melted 
the coldness. 

"I'd like you to meet my wife, colonel.'* ^ 

Somehow I felt the words were not the truth. I 
all but said I didn't want to see her. I felt that she 
would not welcome an ex-convict. 

The graciousness of Southern hospitality dispelled 
my fears. We reached Porter's apartments about 
10 :30, an hour and a half late. Mrs. Porter greeted 
us with great cordiality. She had been the first love 
of Porter in his boyhood days. 

To admit the least, I was slightly "teed." Perhaps 
she did not observe it. Certainly there was no hint of 
disapproval in her manner. 

She served us refreshments and chatted with a 
pleasant ease. I was relieved, but not convinced. 



WITH O. HENRY 811 

Toward midnight Duffy and I started to leave. 
Bill took up his hat. 

"Why, you're not going, too, are you, Mr. Porter?" 
the lady said. 

He stopped for a moment to explain. Duffy and I 
walked up the street. 

"What the hell did Bill want with a wife? It puts 
an end to his liberty — ^his wanderings," I whispered 
loudly to Duffy, just as Porter tapped me on the 
shoulder. He smiled expansively, irrepressibly, as a 
boy might have. 

"You're not pleased with my choice?" 

"I'm not to be pleased!" I fired back. 

I intended walking on with Duffy. Porter inter- 
fered. 

"Come this way with me. We may not see much 
more of each other." 

We went down to the Hudson and sat on the docks. 
The lights of all New Jersey, like a million stars, like 
a hundred Milky Ways, sparkled in the water. The 
big steamers, black, powerful, were moored in the 
slips. Tugboats and ferries skimmed — ^mystic, en- 
chanted barks — up and down the river. 

We talked carelessly. Porter started several times 
to speak seriously and broke off. Another mood seized 
him and he looked at me indulgently and smiled. 

"You're dissatisfied with my matrimonial venture?" 

"It's the silliest thing you ever did." 

"She is a most estimable young lady." Porter 
seemed to be enjoying my resentment. 

"That may be, but what did you want with her?" 

"I loved her." 



312 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"Oh, my God ! That covers a multitude of sins." 

Porter was a born troubadour. He had a happy- 
go-lucky heart, for all that it was crowded down with 
sadness. I felt that he had made a fatal mistake to 
take upon himself obligations that his nature made 
him unfitted to meet. 

"Colonel, I wanted your opinion. I've wondered 
if I acted honorably." 

Porter was the soul of chivalry. For all that he saw 
in Hell's Kitchen, his reverence for woman remained. 
"I've married a highbred woman and brought all my 
troubles upon her. Was it right?" 

Strange blend of impulsiveness and honor, the in- 
stinctive nobility in Porter urged him always to 
measure up to his big responsibilities. 

My fears were ill founded. Bill's marriage did not 
interfere with his greatness. He was never one of the 
recklessly debonair who shake off with an easy con- 
science the obligations they have incurred. Porter 
served two masters — Bohemianism, Convention. He 
served both well. 

Only the Midas touch or the purse of Fortunatus 
could answer such demands. It does not need the 
suggestion of blackmail to account for Porter's inter- 
mittent penury. But I know that in one instance he 
was a victim. 

It was the night after his sudden despondency. For 
three hours I sat in his room waiting for him to keep 
an appointment. He came in whitef aced and haggard. 
The jaunty neatness that was always his was gone. 
He looked limp and careless to me. He went over to 
his desk and sat down. After a long silence he faced 



WITH O. HENRY 818 

me. "I was serious, colonel, last night. If I should 
drop off, will you look after Margaret — be a sort of 
foster-father, as it were?" 

"What's up, Bill? You're as husky as a stevedore." 

"Colonel, you were right. I should have faced it." 
And, without prelude, he launched into the most un- 
usual confidence. Twice Porter deliberately spoke of 
his own affairs. 

"I can't stand it much longer. She comes after me 
regularly, and she's the wife of a big broker here at 
that. Tonight I told her to go hang. She'll get no 
more from me." 

"Will she tell?" 

"Let her." 

Not a former convict at the penitentiary — ^none of 
these, so far as I know, ever bothered him — but a 
woman of high social class, a woman who had lived 
in Austin and flirted with Bill Porter in his troubadour 
days. 

"We used to sing under her window, once in a 
while. She came to me months ago. She knew my 
whole history. She came as a friend. 

"She was in terrible straits, she said. Her Southern 
pride wouldn't let her ask any of her circle. She 
wanted a thousand. I had $150 Oilman Hall had sent 
me. I let her have it. She has been to see me regularly 
ever since. I've emptied my pockets on that table for 
her. Now I'm through. I could have killed her." 

I knew the violence of anger that had once before 
swept Bill Porter when he leaped at the Spanish don. 
He sat back now, spent and nerveless. But I was 
afraid to leave him alone. I stayed there all night. 



314 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

"She'll never trouble you, Bill. You should have 
called her bluff the first time. You've nothing to lose." 

"I have much to lose, colonel. I don't look at things 
as you do." 

The incident was closed. The woman did not bother 
him again, but Porter's ups and downs continued their 
unhappy succession. 

Not blackmail, but fantastic liberality kept his 
pocket empty. To many a down-and-outer he must 
have seemed a veritable "scattergold." 

I remember one quaint, elfin-faced girl. Porter 
supported both her and her mother. 

"They were very kind to me when I had no friends 
in Pittsburgh," he said to me one evening, when he 
brought the girl to dinner with us at Mouquin's. 
"They came to New York and were stranded. I am 
but meeting an obligation." 

I could see nothing to this skimpy brown remnant 
of a girl. She looked like a wistful little gypsy. But 
Porter loved her, and she worshiped him with the 
fidelity of a dog. She used to send him odd, outlandish 
presents that were an abomination to his cultured 
taste. But he would pretend to like them. 

She was bright and happy, but she had little to say. 
Many a time the three of us had dinner together in 
New York on my first visit. There was a certain fairy- 
like charm to her — she was so unobtrusive. We 
scarcely noticed her presence. She was content to 
listen in smiling quiet to Porter's talk. 

When he spoke to her it was with the gentle defer- 
ence due a queen. 

One night he put a red and green handkerchief in 



WITH O. HENRY 315 

his coat pocket. I looked at him amazed. Rich, har- 
monious colors were his preference. He smiled. 
"She sent it up to me. I don't wish to wound her." 
Prince, then pauper. Prodigal one day — ^broke the 
next. Whim was his bookkeeper. It piled a big deficit 
on the prosy, matter-of-fact side of the ledger, but it 
splashed the inner, realer pages with a bounteous, un- 
accountable credit. With a higher kind of reckoning 
it gave us Bill Porter — reckless of the superficial 
values; unerring in his devotion to the better standard 
as be saw it. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

New Year's eve; the last talk; "a missionary after all." 

As one who stood in the world's highway while the 
rushing multitude in the ever shifting pageant of Life 
went by, each scene flashing upon the vivid negative 
of his mind a new record, each picture different, un- 
expected, developing new lights and shades — ^like that 
in his relation to Life was Bill Porter. 

For him there could be no monotony, no "world 
overrun by conclusions, no life moving by rote." 
Ever new, ever incalculable, ever absorbing — the mov- 
ing drama gripped his mind with its humor and its 
tragedy; it held his heart with its joy and its sadness. 
Desolate it was at times and piercing in its pathos — 
uninteresting or dull, never. Porter lived in a quiver- 
ing, tense excitement, for he was one who watched 
and in a little understood the vast hubbub of striving, 
half-blind humanity. 

He had about him an air of suspense, of throbbing 
expectancy, as though he had just concluded an ad- 
venture or were just about to set forth on one. When- 
ever I saw him I had an instinctive question on my 
lips— "What's up. Bill?" 

His attitude piqued curiosity. I felt it the day 
he came down from the veranda of the American con- 
sulate and began, in that low-pitched voice, the droU 



WITH O. HENRY 317 

and solemn dissertation on the Mexican liquor situa- 
tion. 

It was with him through the dreary unhappiness 
of the prison years and in the big struggle to come 
back in New York. In every turn of that devious 
route, even through the noisome tunnel, he strode 
with brave and questing tread. Life never bored him. 
From the first moment I met him until the last he 
never lost interest. 

"You shall have a strange and bewildering experi- 
ence tonight, my brave bandit, and I shall have the 
joy of watching you." 

It was the last day of 1907. For hours I had sat 
in Porter's room in the Caledonia, waiting for him 
to finish his work. He was writing with lightning 
speed. Sometimes he would finish a page and im- 
mediately wrinkle it into a ball and throw it on the 
floor. Then he would write on, page after page, with 
hardly a pause, or he would sit silent and concentrated 
for half an hour at a stretch. I was weary of waiting. 

"But there is still something new in the world, Al," 
he promised. "You'll get a shock that all the bump- 
tious thrills of train-robbing never afforded." 

It was almost midnight when we started forth. 

He led me through alleys and by-streets I had 
never seen. We came into dark, narrow lanes, where 
old five- and six-story residences, dilapidated and 
neglected, sent forth an ancient musty odor. We went 
on and on until it seemed that we had reached the 
bottom of a black, unfathomable hole in the very 
center of the city. 

"Listen," he whispered. And in a moment a wild, 



318 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

whistling tumult, that was as if the horns and trum- 
pets and all the mighty bells of heaven and earth let 
loose a shouting thunder, came down into that hole 
and caught it in a shrieking boom. I reached out my 
hand and touched Porter's arm. "My God, Bill, what 
is it?" 

"Something new under the moon, colonel, when- 
ever you can't find it under the sun. That, friend, is 
but New York's greeting to the New Year." 

That hole — and no one but the Prowling Magician 
in his everlasting search for the otherwise could have 
found it — was somewhere near the Hudson. 

"Do you feel that a little conversation in my sooth- 
ing pianissimo would revive you, colonel?" 

We went down to the docks and sat there for an 
hour before we spoke a word. It was the last long 
communion I was ever to have with the gifted friend, 
whose memory has been and is an inspiration. 

Porter seemed suddenly to be wrapped in gloom. 
I was leaving in a day or two. Moved by some un- 
accountable impulse — perhaps by the melancholy in 
his manner, I suggested that he accompany me." 

"I'd like to go West and over the beaten paths 
with you. When I can make better provision for 
those dependent on me, I may." 

"Oh, just cut loose and come. I'll take you out 
among all the old timers. You can get material 
enough to run you ten years on Western stories." 

I was rambling on vividly. Porter's warm, strong 
hand clasped mine. 

"Colonel," he interrupted, "I have a strange idea 
that this will be our last meeting." With a quick 



WITH O. HENRY 319 

change of mood, he smiled sheepishly. ''Besides, I 
have not yet converted New York." 

Converted — I laughed at that word from Bill 
Porter. I remembered his flashing resentment when 
I suggested the role to him before he left the peni- 
tentiary. 

"So you did become a missionary after all! What 
effect do you think "The Four Million" will have on 
the readers in this maelstrom? Will it reach out and 
correct evils?" 

"That is too much to ask. The blind will not per- 
ceive its message." 

"Blind — who do you mean by that?" 

"Not the idle poor, colonel, but the idle rich. They 
will yet live to have the bandage torn by gaunt, angry 
hands from their lazy, unseeing eyes." 

"Where did you get that hunch, Bill?" 

"In our former residence, colonel." 

Mellowed and broadened, he was this man who came 
back from the blighting tunnel to the welcoming 
highways. A different Bill, this friend of the shopgirl 
and down-and-outer, from the proud recluse who 
stopped his ears to Sallie's needs and shuddered with 
abhorrence at the mere mention of the Prison 
Demon. 

"I haven't changed colonel; but I see more. Life 
seems to me like a rich, vast diamond that is forever 
flashing new facets before us. I never tire of watching 
it. When my own future seemed so black — that in- 
terest kept me going." 

For all his whims and his fine, high pride, for all 
the sadness that was often his, this interest kept him 



320 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 

forever on tiptoe. He was never a laggard in the fine 
art of living. 

Bill Porter had a sort of corner on the romance of 
life — a monopoly that was his by the divine right of 
understanding. It was a light that rifled even the 
sordid murk of the basement cafe and turned upon 
the hidden worth in the character of the starved and 
wretched dancing girls. 

If life brought an ever new thrill to him he re- 
turned to it a gentle radiance that made glad the 
heart of many a Sue, many a Soapy. 

There was in him a sunny toleration — an eager 
youthfulness. He was the great adventurer with his 
hand on life's pulse-beat. 

To have stood at his side and looked through his 
eyes has softened with mellow humor the stark and 
cruel things — has touched with disturbing beauty the 
finer elements of existence. 

The End. 










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